| Chit-Chat » Trump is the Republican Nominee » 5/05/2016 9:49 am |
- Brian
- Replies: 53
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z10 wrote:I get the impression that most of the members here are right wing?
I agree with what others said regarding the rightwing/leftwing spectrum. I'm willing to bet most people here are skeptical of taking most any political claim or pronouncement from a publuc figure at face value.
As a sidenote, who do you think Trump will get as a running mate? That couldcould help sway some undecideds in the general electorate.
| Chit-Chat » Trump is the Republican Nominee » 5/04/2016 3:45 pm |
- Brian
- Replies: 53
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Greg wrote:Brian wrote:
Hilary is good at brushing things off, but she's not likeable. Trump and Bill Clinton are both highly likeable, and they are both good liars as well.
This perception is not uncommon. It's true that Clinton is not likable. But Trump is magnitudes worse. And both of them are incredibly well known by this point.
Likability is against Trump. He will, however, turn out some people who don't usually vote. There are both Republican and Democrat defections; it's hard to say which will be greater.Trump doesnt need likeability. He has people's envy, and respect (as ridiculous as that is) because he says whatever he wants, or at least his character does. Clinton still needs likeability. Most people don't want to "have a beer" with Trump or Hilary, but I think that hurts Hilary, because Trump doesn't pretend to be the guy next door you can grab a beer with.
| Chit-Chat » Trump is the Republican Nominee » 5/04/2016 2:24 pm |
- Brian
- Replies: 53
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Hilary is good at brushing things off, but she's not likeable. Trump and Bill Clinton are both highly likeable, and they are both good liars as well.
I think Trump is a good enough rhetor that this election will be interesting and unpredictable. It's just too bad one of these people will end up leading our nation.
| Resources » God and Necessity by Stephen E. Parrish » 5/03/2016 10:03 am |
- Brian
- Replies: 10
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DanielCC wrote:
If you have access to journal archives then I would urge you to check out as many of Brian Leftow's articles as you can. He no longer endorses such a strong form of Divine Simplicity (his modal theory requires divine mental events) but has written in defence of it in the past along with divers theistic arguments such as forms of the OA and the PSR Cosmological Argument.
Daniel,
I just read (fairly quickly) one of Leftow's articles and found it pretty impressive, and very much the sort of thing I am looking for.
Between Brian Leftow, Barry Miller, and James Dolezal, I think I will have plenty to chew on. And of course, feser's new book,whenever that comes out.
| Practical Philosophy » Virtue Ethics » 5/03/2016 12:11 am |
- Brian
- Replies: 5
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Two Questions:
1) How many people here subscribe to an ethical theory other than virtue ethics? If so, what are your reasons?
and (the more fundamental questions)
2) What is the relationship between classical theism and virtue ethics for those of you who do subscribe to virtue ethics? It seems that if you adhere to something like Platonism, then one of the results of classical theism is that God is at the Pinnacle of Being (to speak loosely, and perhaps not with complete accuracy), and matter is at the bottom, while every being is somewhere else in the Great Chain of Being. If you take this as your metaphysics, then it seems the goal of ethics, or at least one of the goals, is to affirm your place in that chain by being the best type of thing you are--presumably human. If this is how you view ethics, then it seems that being a good person (virtue ethics) is prior to creating good states of affairs (consequentialism) or performing good actions (deontology).
Thoughts?
| Resources » God and Necessity by Stephen E. Parrish » 5/02/2016 8:06 pm |
- Brian
- Replies: 10
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Greg,
Thanks. Barry Miller looks extremely fascinating.
| Resources » God and Necessity by Stephen E. Parrish » 5/02/2016 7:57 pm |
- Brian
- Replies: 10
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Greg,
Thank you for bringing that to my attention. That is disappointing.
Can you or anyone recommend a better book? I am not at all adverse to reading original sources (in fact, most often I find this preferable to contemporary summaries), but I am looking for a good sustained defense of classical theism by someone conversant with contemporary philosophy of religion and science. It seems every defense of God debate/book/popular article is about Theistic personalism.
Any recommendations?
____________________
Edit: I posted this before I saw the above reply. Any other thoughts/recommendations are welcome though!
| Resources » God and Necessity by Stephen E. Parrish » 5/02/2016 6:55 pm |
- Brian
- Replies: 10
| Resources » Classical Theism-Rome » 4/30/2016 8:38 am |
- Brian
- Replies: 9
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iwpoe wrote:
Many superficially polytheist pagans, were monotheists in the sense that they ultimately believed there was one supreme ground of reality. The reason that Christianity could be so successful in the Greco-Roman world was because all it did was recognize this situation and articulate it straightforwardly. The supreme authority of all reality simply becomes God as such, the role that the gods and heroes played in previous thinking gets taken over by angels and saints, and this makes everything a lot more clear hierarchically.
The only pagans in the Greco-Roman world I know to be very different in outlook are Homer himself and Heraclitus. Homer's picture of reality really seems to be the rising up and falling down of myriad forces from no particular source at all. The foundation of things does really seem to be fundamentally plural for Homer.
We should be careful reading backwards anachronistic thought into the past. The Greco-Roman world, and especially the Roman world, had a good sense for hierarchy. We moderns do not.
@Iwpoe,
Are you familiar with any of the later Platonic readings of Homer, in which they view him as some sort of secret metaphysical, teaching the nature of the world through epic poetry? If so, what fo you think of that endeavor? I recall Plutarch and Porphyry both gaving bits about this, and I am sure others do as well.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Question on Plotinus Argument for the One » 4/29/2016 9:52 am |
- Brian
- Replies: 14
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DanielCC wrote:Brian wrote:
Aside from general arguments against materialism, why would a natural law (the complete natural law that dictates the action of everything in the natural world) not be a satisfactory ultimate principle? That law would be simple, would it not? I suppose that unless that principle accounted for the existence of undifferentiated matter, then it would not be ultimate..? Excuse me if this is a foolish question, it has been some time since I've seriously engaged with Plotinus.
What is a 'Natural Law'? People bandy these words around without really thinking what they mean when taken ontologicallyy as opposed to methodologically. A Law is not a being in one of the categories; instead it's shorthand for a series of relations which hold between X kinds of entity - depending on what account one takes this relation could be one of necessitiation based on the natures of the entities in question or an arbitrary series which has just occurred that way with sufficient regularity. Neither of these explain others instead they are codified explanations.
[A crude parallel: the fact that there was an earthquake explains why the windowpanes rattled but the 'explanation' 'The windowpanes rattled because there was an earthquake' is not the reason the windowpanes rattled)I did not word my question precisely. Let me try again. Most atheists would be satisfied if if we discovered the "theory of everything" that described the way in which all natural phenomena acted. They would be satisfied that this was the ultimate level of explanation that one could attain. Really though, the theory wouldnt be a principle that explained everythng, it would be a formula that expressed some natural law (I think I am using this correctly here, but if not, please correct me). So the question is about this force or natural law being described by the theory, and not the theory that describes it. Why, in principle could this force not be the ultimate thing in th
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