I think a lot of this comes from our current societal make-up as opposed to some intellectual shift (although the two are unrelated.)  In a multi-cultural society with no universally binding myths, no universally accepted religion, and no universally agreed upon image of a good human being, what else is left besides the freedom of the will to pursue it's own version of the good?  Consent is a pragmatic solution precisely because of the injustices you speak of, Seigneur.  Instead of bickering endlessly about the who is a citizen and where rights come from we acknowledge that everyone has a will, and that will should be respected and constrained only by negative duties to not infringe upon other's freedom of the will.  When you place that pragmatic solution in conjunction with our (American's) over-estimation of technology, industry, and practical\tangible results, you end up with a sort if utilitarian individualism where the voluntary whims if the individual will is king.

That's not exactly an explanation of how we got here, intellectually speaking, but I think it explains why the average American holds the default ethical position that's somewhere between relativism and utilitarian individualism.  It's an ethic that binds our society together, or at least appears to.  I think the more multi-cultural and democratic a society gets, the more inherent conflict one sees between A) making the individual will the primary value-arbiter and B) the desire for a culture that more or less reflects your values and the values you grew up with.

Those look good.  I'll read through them tomorrow.

Can someone point me towards or rehearse to me the strongest arguments against sola scriptura?  I grew up old-school Lutheran and I recently started working with some very theologically informed Lutherans and sola scriptura was something we discussed.  I'm not up to date on my Christian apologetics, however, and my half of the conversation left something to be desired.  I have some thoughts but I'm curious to hear yours.    Thanks.

My intuition is that "if we can imagine X, then X is possible" is clearly false.  Although I think a lot hangs on the definition of imagine.

For example I can imagine a woman who just had a hysterectomy giving birth to a child in 10 months.  That's biologically impossible.

I can imagine a Hydrogen atom with 4 protons.  That's physically impossible.

I can imagine Russel and Whitehead being correct that mathematics is derivative of logic.  But that is logically impossible.

I can imagine an Acorn growing into a Rosebush.  That is metaphysically impossible (on a standard reading of essentialist metaphysics).

I don't see any reason to think that imagination is a guide to possibility.  Does anyone other than Marxists, for example, think a classless utopia is possible just because it has been dreamt up?

Hypatia wrote:

The one problem with Platonism compared to Aristotelianism is it can get a bit too otherworldly--I remember Pierre Hadot having that complaint about Plotinus, that it was like visiting a foreign realm divorced from everyday life. Which I can sympathize with, so I like paying attention to the Thomists because I need a good dose of common sense philosophy every so often. Otherwise the apophaticism and eliminative idealism creep in. Or worse.

Interestingly, Plotinus didn't seem to have that problem if we are to believe Porphyry.  He adopted orphans and stressed the (chronological) priority of the civic virtues over the intellectual/purificatory virtues.  Definitely strange how the emblematic anti-worldly, head in the stars, Platonist was rather practical.