tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8893395044073884604.post8627588152940071057..comments2023-01-07T13:59:44.788+00:00Comments on tillyandlola: Ed Feser responds to Sean CarrollDavid Brightlyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8893395044073884604.post-86619409166339586372014-07-30T00:28:21.191+01:002014-07-30T00:28:21.191+01:00I have given up commenting at Ed Feser's blog....I have given up commenting at Ed Feser's blog. It's hard to engage the man himself and I'm too easily seduced into endless wrangling with the acolytes. You're right, Ed comes over as an apologist. Bill, on the other hand, is a seeker. There is a nice discussion going on at the moment---actually it's been running off and on for a number of years---about what might be described as the metaphysics of fiction, but is really about the intricacies of language and logic. Definitely worth a look in.<br />David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8893395044073884604.post-38429113086703073812014-07-29T00:18:53.663+01:002014-07-29T00:18:53.663+01:00Thanks for your reply. I first found this place a ...Thanks for your reply. I first found this place a few months ago from following your profile link during (if I recall correctly) your comments on Feser's series about Kripkean arguments against machines being able to "really"(TM) think. I've been dipping in periodically. Do you comment anywhere else besides Feser and Vallicella's blogs?<br /><br />Despite growing up Catholic, I never found Scholastic metaphysics even very interesting or relevant, so I didn't have any strong feelings about their content one way or the other. But on metaphysics in general, since grad school I've drifted further and further towards the Pragmatist idea that they're all just a series of strictly optional vocabularies we use to tie off the loose ends of whatever our best empirical models of the world happen to be at the time. They are aglets: they contribute nothing to the function of the shoe in the way the sole keeps rocks from pricking us and the tops keep rain from soaking us and the laces keep it all together. They are just a little afterthought we put on at the very tippity-tips because our thoughts might as well come to an end somewhere.<br /><br />Feser is trying to tell professional cobblers that they aren't "really" clothing our feet unless we buy his particular brand of aglets. I consider his methodology to be at best pseudo-philosophical. As this post shows, he neither begins nor ends in Doubt. He is interested simply in intoning dogmas at people, and teaching his followers the secret chants and invocations they should repeat by rote, as an exorcist should repeat his ritual to banish one possessed by a demon, or worse, by nonbelief.<br />Staircaseghosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02647353730607650698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8893395044073884604.post-61978127416526829382014-07-24T12:35:37.122+01:002014-07-24T12:35:37.122+01:00Hello SCG. I confess that it was the passage you ...Hello SCG. I confess that it was the passage you quote that goaded me into writing this piece. When I was younger I would have no truck with metaphysics, which I associated with the Scholastic mode of thought that we both find, shall I say, problematic! I now see metaphysics as unavoidable, but my concept of metaphysics has altered. I think of it in a Kantian sense, if that's not too pretentious, as an account of why we think along the lines we do. This account has to be broadly in sympathy with what we know (or think we know) from science. One aspect of this is explaining why Aristotelianism is attractive, for some. Since it is an elaboration of common sense we have to account for the divergence of common sense and science. This is not an attempt to disprove Aristotelianism through logic and evidence. I certainly don't think you will much alter the mindset of an adherent this way. A very great deal, after all, is invested in Aristotelian causation. It's more an attempt to understand why anyone might think that way.<br /><br />Thanks for commenting.David Brightlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06757969974801621186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8893395044073884604.post-82615966207123745392014-07-20T20:32:10.990+01:002014-07-20T20:32:10.990+01:00"The chief arguments of natural theology (i.e...<i>"The chief arguments of natural theology (i.e. Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Thomistic and other Scholastic arguments) rest on premises derived from metaphysics rather than natural science, and in particular on metaphysical premises that any possible natural science must presuppose. For that reason, they are more certain than anything science itself could in principle ever either support or refute."</i><br /><br />This was the part of his post that absolutely had me falling out of my chair.<br /><br />Suppose you think science really does presuppose, logically or methodologically, some particular metaphysics. Ok. I find this claim highly dubious, but it's not something only an insane person would say, or someone utterly ignorant of modern science.<br /><br />Let us further suppose you think this metaphysics is a Scholastic one. I find it even more dubious that Scholastic metaphysics can even be <i>reconciled</i> (in the sense of being minimally logically consistent) with science as we now have it, much less that it is both true <i>and</i> a necessary precondition. So now I see a conjunction of improbable premises, which must perforce be even less likely than either conjunct.<br /><br />But he also claims that his particular interpretation of the Scholastics' particular interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics is <i>more certain</i> than science itself?!? More certain than heliocentrism, more certain than the germ theory of disease, more certain than the atomic number of hydrogen? The hubris here is breathtaking.<br /><br />I can imagine how to engage in argument with people who hold the first two theses. But this last bit is just a "pray tell, Mr. Babbage" moment; I cannot construct a model of another human's thought process that would output this kind of upside-down dogmatism and still be amenable to alteration by means of me throwing evidence and logic at it.Staircaseghostnoreply@blogger.com