Some years back I was searching for a better method to play lightgun games like Duck Hunt under emulation by using a Wii remote as a light gun. The standard Wii remote way of pointing at a TV with a sensor bar underneath is not precise enough. The Wii remote has an infrared camera that tracks the LEDs in the sensor bar, and uses that to estimate where the remote is pointing. But since all the LEDs…
Personhood is teleologically relational in the sense that a person is the kind of being that necessarily can only be fulfilled in relationships with other persons. Necessarily, any person other than God is a creature. So, if God is a single person, this person necessarily can only be fulfilled in relationships with creatures. If a being only finds its fulfillment in relationships with F s, then…
Consider this thesis, which both Augustine and Aquinas would accept: Value supervenes on being (VSB): How valuable reality is is determined by what entities exist. However: It is good to have a true belief and bad to have a false belief. We now have an argument against presentism (only present things exist) and growing block (only present and past things exist). Among our beliefs, we have beliefs…
In typical lab research ethics, the following types of ethical considerations count against an experiment: risks of harm to the world outside the lab risks of harm to persons in the lab risks of pain to conscious entities in the lab. (The categories overlap: the persons in the lab are conscious entities, and pain harms them. Likewise, the persons in the lab have lives outside the lab, and harm to…
On the Aristotelian account of abstraction, we abstract the forms of things via perception. But here is a problem. First of all, we sometimes have better knowledge of things not perceived than of things perceived. Let’s say you read a detailed scientific book about pangolins, though you’ve never encountered one, while I once saw a koala in a zoo, but don’t much know anything more about them than…
Suppose we have an infinite regress of chickens and eggs, with no first item, and suppose that if there is any last item, it’s not a chicken. Plausibly, then: The plurality of the chickens explains the eggs. But also plausibly: If x has an explanation, then x has a fundamental explanation. However: No plurality of chickens and eggs fundamentally explains the eggs. So, something that is other than…
Here are two Aristotelian theses: Complete human flourishing requires the exercise of all the human virtues. Courage is a human virtue. Add a highly plausible thesis that likely everyone will accept: The exercise of courage requires apparent or real danger. Now add some theses that a Christian will surely accept: In heaven, there are no apparent danger. In heaven, there is no real danger. In…
I am toying with the thesis that each person’s self-consciousness is qualitatively different. Perhaps all persons have uniquely individuating properties, something like haecceities, and for each such individuating property there is a different quale of seeing oneself as an instance of it. One might even think the quale is the unique individuating property. Or, alternately, it might be that each…
Kant writes: only three [forms of sovereignty] are possible: namely, either only one , or some in association, or all those together who constitute the civil society possess sovereign power ( autocracy , aristocracy , and democracy …). The division of the sovereigns into “one”, “some” or “all” members of a society sure sounds like an exhaustive division, at least assuming that there is a sovereign…
Kant says that a virtuous persons has the happiness of others as an end. Note that this is not an end in the sense of a goal which we try to achieve. For the goal can’t be that all others are happy . If that were the goal, we might as well not even try: we’re not going to achieve it. Nor can the goal be that some others are happy . For that’s already so, and so nothing need be done. Could the goal…
In the case of non-epistemic goods, it’s an obvious feature of life that someone there is a choice to be made by an individual between their own first-order good and the first-order good of the community—each requires the sacrifice of the other. In the case of epistemic goods, this is less obvious. In the pragmatic case, the typical reason for such competition between goods is due to limited…
It’s easy to generate probabilistic paradoxes in a universe (or multiverse) with infinitely many people (e.g., if infinitely many people roll a die, equal numbers of people get 1 as get more than 1, so why think it’s more likely to get more than 1?). But what about a very large but finite universe? I used to think: “The only relevant difference is between finite and infinite. Really big but…
In order to give valid consent, the subjects in an experiment need to be informed about all the harms that the experimenter plans to impose on them. Being deceived is a harm. Therefore, in order to give valid consent, the subjects in an experiment where the experimenter plans to use deceit need to be informed that deceit will be imposed. Often, consent conditions are phrased in terms of risks, and…
Assume that in fact all ravens are black. Suppose you are sequentiallly observing ravens, and noting each one to be black. After observing n ravens, your evidence that the next raven is black will typically be significantly better than the evidence that all ravens are black. Now at some point, say after observing n A ravens, your evidence that all ravens are black will rise to the level of…
Pascal’s Wager is an argument that it is prudentially rational to engage in theistic belief promotion practices (TBPP), namely practices apt to promote one’s belief in God. My interest this post is the standard epistemic rationality objection to the Wager, that engaging in TBPPs is irrational—a kind of brainwashing of oneself. Let’s think about the objection with a bit more care. Consider a…
There are different types of knowledge: mathematical, geological, biological, a priori , a posteriori , de se , interpersonal, hard-earned, esoteric, very well justified, professional, certain, firm, testimonial, propositional, etc. When we divide up knowledge, some of the divisions are more properly epistemic than others. For instance, the difference between hard-earned knowledge and easy-come…
A number of philosophers have posited a special “second-person knowledge”, expressible by phrases like “Bob and Alice know each other”. It is often claims that second-person knowledge requires reciprocal interpersonal interaction. I think this is false. Suppose Alice and Bob live on Earth but have not yet had any interaction. There is a Twin Earth, where by chance everything happens like on Earth,…
Alice has lived forever in a universe with an infinite road that has a beginning and no end, and is marked every mile. Every day of her life, by an irresistable longing, she has followed these rules: If somehow she’s not on the road, she goes to mile zero on the road. If she is on the road, she walks a mile in the endless direction of the road. Besides the movement required by 1 and 2, she stays…
My 13-year-old daughter came up with a rather nice argument against taking knowledge to be nothing but justified true belief. Jesus tells us that no one knows the day or the hour of his return. But now for each of the 24 possible hours, we can arrange for someone to have reason to believe that that hour is the hour of return. One of these 24 people will then have a justified true belief as to the…
For a while this spring I’ve been thinking about ways of avoiding quaternity views of God. The problem is that, first, Father ≠ Son, Son ≠ Spirit and Father ≠ Spirit and, second, we seem to have to choose between the following two options: A. Father = God, Son = God and Spirit = God, or B. Father ≠ God, Son ≠ God and Spirit ≠ God. Add: Father is divine, Son is divine, Spirit is divine, and God is…
Aquinas’s account of location for material substance is as follows. Ordinary material substances have a special accident—one more fundamental than all other matter-related accidents—he calls “dimensive quantity”, but which I will just call “dimensions”. This accident makes the object have a specific shape and size. The substance is then in a place provided that its dimensions are “commensurate…
Humans are ridiculous. Humans are only ridiculous if there is a being much greater than humans. So, there is a being much greater than humans.
The Company axiom of mereology holds that an object cannot have only one proper part. This is a weaker version of the (Weak) Supplementation axiom which holds that if an object has a proper part, it has another proper part that doesn’t overlap the first. Say that an object is simple at a time t provided that its instantaneous temporal part at t is simple. Suppose we accept that: fundamental…
Let me re-phrase an argument from an earlier post . Suppose “=” is governed by the classical rules of identity, and G, F, S, and H are names for God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let x ≠ y abbreviate Not( x = y ). Let D ( x ) say that x is divine. There then are three predicates A , B and C such that: A ( S ) and not A ( F ) B ( H ) and not B ( S ) C ( S ) and not C ( F ). For…
One of the philosophical challenges of Aquinas’ account of transsubstantiation is his insistence that the bread and wine are not merely annihilated and replaced by Christ’s body and blood, but that they are changed into Christ’s body and blood. Now, it is easy to see how bread could be changed into a part of Christ’s body. That routinely happened when Christ ate bread in his earthly life. But…
