From The Economist

Rather disturbing if you think about it.

Feel free to comment on this...

Is Aquinan scholarship dualist or strangely materialist? Alvin Plantinga, now 30 years famous at Notre Dame University, asks the question,

...there is also the important but obscure view of Thomas Aquinas and his followers. Is this a form of dualism? The question is vexed. According to Aquinas, a human person is a material substance with an immaterial part, the soul. Aquinas says, of this immaterial part, that it itself is a substance. Furthermore the soul, this immaterial part, has the property of possibly thinking (believing, desiring, hoping, deciding, etc.), and after death, does think. But Aquinas also says that the soul is the form of the body. A form, however, at least as far as I can see is or is like a property; and a property, presumably, can't think. If the soul is a form, therefore, how can it be capable of thinking?

~Alvin Plantinga's article Materialism and Christianity in Persons: Human and Divine, 2007

Very telling video from Regent University

Quotables with Jerry Fodor, Heraclitus

Two years ago, in an interview conducted by Anglican-priest-turned-agnostic Mark Vernon, Rutgers philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor had this to say,

I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don't imagine I'd ask someone whose credentials consist of a Ph. d. in philosophy.

Frenchman Pierre Hadot recently published a new translation of Heraclitus' aphorism which I believe bears consideration; the Greeks always had the most poetic philosophies,

What is born tends to disappear.

Questions in the Imperative, or A Recent Return to Borges

I was about a year back and twenty miles north of Boston when I realized my final paper for a class needed some extra citations and I took to the college's library in order to add a few sources. After an hour I found myself off track, merely flipping through books for pleasure rather than task. It was during this idleness that I discovered a particularly interesting book titled The Heretical Imperative. The book itself would be difficult to find even by reference; in the library's basement, fallen behind a small stack of fictions. I would not have cared to open the book had I not remembered that a professor of mine then abroad in Italy had once before given me an excerpt of it.

The Heretical Imperative was written by a certain Peter L. Berger, and most printings range around 200 pages in length. The particular book I held in my hands happened to be the tool of a sleight of tongue. Beside the front flap is a brief note,

Gift of Mary Frances Nagley
Dec. 16, 1979
on the occasion of the
Ordination to the Priesthood
of
Mary Jane Nestler

The sense of humor of this Mary Nagley intrigued me, and I copied her dedication onto a piece of paper and read the rest of the book that day. The theme of the book, if I understood Berger correctly, was this: As our culture increasingly becomes more and more scientific, more cutting, more splicing, a belief in God will continue to become less normative and more arabesque - fanciful but ridiculous. Any belief in God (or any rejection of modernity), therefore, is heretical; a definition of heresy as any choice away from the standard. In other words, heresy is the only route left.

I rather enjoyed the book. The prose was tight and connected, and Berger drew upon a wealth of sources from many cultures, languages, and histories. Subsequent searches for Berger revealed him to be a sociologist from Boston University, still employed, living about thirty minutes south of me. Publisher records and third party informations on The Heretical Imperative are conflicting. A first edition copy from Doubleday can still be acquired at a reasonable price, and information from them says the earliest date of publication was 1980. But curiously, the dedicatory note by Ms Nagley was dated exactly 24 days prior to this. Other sources confirm Nagley's date, including an open letter I found written by Berger dated April 1980, to the journal Theology Today, which mentioned the book's publication year as 1979.

The two in the dedicatory note proved more difficult to track down. I found nothing about Mary Frances Nagley, the writer of the note, though a deeper investigation could prove more telling given more time and energy. Research on her friend, priestess Mary Jane Nestler, was turning dour as well until I uncovered a press release from the Episcopalian news archives dated August 5, 2003. The release addressed Nestler as Deputy Mary Jane Nestler and not as a priest, the title of deputy in certain circles - including Anglican - indicates the status of laity and not cleric. A strange twist indeed, if Deputy Nestler was once a priestess but now is not. The press release itself was uninteresting, Nestler and other deputies wrote to encourage priests to study foreign cultures and languages in an effort of cross-anthropological appeal. At this point I decided to end the search to learn more about the curious note; further investigation would be unnecessary and probably uninteresting. Even as I write this I yawn with anticipating a long and restful sleep.

Intention (not Intentionality)

Before this blog became the face of my venture into Chile, this was a philosophical blog. To a handful of people's delight (and to the overwhelming majority's boredom) this blog is returning to that purpose.

Anyways, here is my reading list for the rest of the summer.

The reading list for the rest of the Summer!:

Mind, by Searle 50% done (I think it's boring and that I wish Searle mentioned more cognitive studies)

The Veil of Isis: an Essay on the Idea of Nature, by Hadot 15% done (So far, second best book of the summer)

Memory, History, Forgiveness, by Ricoeur 1% done (I have rarely felt so stupid, except when reading Deleuze or Derrida)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Kundera 2%done (So far, this book is AWESOME.)

Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, by Kolakowski 90% done (It's a pretty-good treatment of philosophy's fundamental question(s). Read it for its summary of Parmenides.)

God and the Philosophers, edited by Norris 95% done (Great talk by 10 philosophers over the subject of God, religion and reality.)

The Best in Science and Nature Writing 2003, edited by Richard Dawkins 15% done

The Best in Science and Nature Writing 2004, edited by Stephen Pinker 100% done

One bus, one plane and two cars later...

For the last two days I have been residing blissfully in the United States. The weather is gorgeous: Santiago taught me that if there is at least warm weather, cloudy days aren't so bad. Even as soon as stepping into the Dallas airport on layover I have been scouring magazines, interrogating friends and devouring the Web to see what great music I have missed. In the span of two American, Summer months I have missed quite a bit.

Here are some of the goods. The boldface goes band then song title.

Wild Sweet Orange - Ten Dead Dogs



Mates of State - My Only Offer



Goldfrapp - Satin Chic



Cansei de Ser Sexy - Music is My Hot, Hot Sex