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Currently reading: The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth by David Bentley Hart

So, life has just gotten a lot less hectic. The semester is over (I should be getting grades back tomorrow - I'm still a trifle apprehensive about that), and I am done with Starbucks as of last week Tuesday. So now I have some time off to study effectively, and make up for the fact that I've been mostly a general studies philosopher until now. Of course, what happens is that on any given day, I'll have either discipline or concentration, but never both; I can either sit and stare at a text for hours on end and get through 30 pages, or goof off online most of the day and cram 30 pages into a well-oiled brain. Plus or minus 1/2-1 page of a Latin text with 16th century Italian shorthand as I start reading Henry of Ghent (it's still easier than reading Sanskrit). I'm frustrated by the fact that I seem to tire so easily; my mind has a set amount of energy at the beginning of the day, whatever I actually need to get done, and it never seems to be apportioned the way I need it.

In other news, I just came across the following website: http://www.meontology.net. I think it's a little too cluttered, though.

Potential Thesis Topics

One more day left of finals; I'm done studying for the night and waiting for the energy drink to wear off so that I can go to bed. As I'm up anyway, here's two potential thesis topics concerning Scotus that I've been batting around:

• Scotus' notion of contingency. Modern modal accounts make contingency out to be such that if x is contingent, then it is possible that x and it is possible that not-x. Contingency thus gets relegated to the realm of possibility; that is all there is to it. Thus, that which is contingent can be viewed as random or arbitrary, though not necessarily so. Scotus grounds contingency purely in the will, and predominantly in the divine will; all other contingency comes back to this. Thus, we explain possiblity in terms of volitional contingency, rather than contingency in terms of (logical or metaphysical) possibility; room is opened for that which is neither determined nor random.
• Eternal generation in the Trinity. This has been a big debate at Trinity; many have abandoned the view for a sparser Trinity, or merely kept the judgement behind eternal generation (that which is begotten is of the same nature as the begetter) while either rejecting or remaining silent on more than that. Aside from arguments that biblical exegesis really doesn't support the view after all (an argument outside my area of expertise), there are the philosophical arguments that EG results in ontological subordinationism. As one who has been on the side of EG (at least in maintaining its logical possibility, with further decision needing help from both systematic and biblical theologians), I would be interested in looking at a medieval view which I could take as an example which both puts for a rigorous account of EG while has the conceptual tools to defend itself against the contemporary philosophical arguments. I guess for this Scotus is as good as Aquinas or perhaps Anselm, but it provides a different explanation for those who have difficulties with Aquinas' theory of the divine persons as relations.

Reflections on Academics

Thinking through last semester as to why it was so stressful, I think one of the things is that I feel like I have to effectively study for three different reasons, each with a substantial amount of stuff to get through.

1. Short Term: I need to get through school and get my degree. Further, I need good grades to get into a good doctoral program. At the same time, classes seem to tie into the other two areas of study at a depressingly low rate; often, it feels like I simply need to get through a class in order to jump another hoop. Better classes provide atlases for the topic in case I want to return in my own time, but I still feel overwhelmed at the end of the class by the subject matter and not prepared to deal with it.
2. Long Term: The research which follows more-or-less stable interests and which gives me an area of specialization. I need something which I can write on, and afterwards feel like I actually knew about what I was writing. Also, I need an area of interest which reminds me why I am in philosophy and theology. Sometimes I can tie this into class papers, but when classes are all across the board or are intro classes (or both, like this semester), I'm not quite sure how to pull this off.
3. Edifying: I have specific questions at specfic times, and I want to be able to study more about them. These questions change around, so this isn't a long-term study project, but it is something which would help me immensely if I had time for it. Unfortunately, the other two areas are more practical and I feel more pressured into studying them so that I can eventually get a job.

The long and short of it is, I don't have time to do all three at any level of quality (especially when making time for my wife and working a draining job with unstable hours), but I need all three for one reason or another. Trying to do all three often leads to burnout, which leads to doing none of them. Further, I don't always know who to trust on given issues, especially when it comes to reading theology; there's always another argument, always another exegesis, and quite frankly, I am less than impressed by much evangelical writing (not that I'm typically any more impressed by liberal, or postmodern, or non-evangelical Reformed writing). So I don't feel like I can know anything about an issue without spending tons of time and energy which I don't have researching it. I am at the point where I am afraid to start researching more than a single topic at a time; given the real world, I feel pulled apart in all different directions, and in the end going in none (or in all, grisly results included).

Anyone have any tips for getting out of the mire?

On Rabbits

Our rabbit Tiger loves to escape. When we would put him in a pen made up of cardboard boxes, he would spend so much time nudging at cracks, jumping over low spots, and running headlong into weak points in the wall. We never could build a pen which would hold him in; even when I tried taping boxes together, the little bugger pulled hard enough to take them apart again.

Now, we finally got him a real pen. No escapes from this one. Tiger finally has a place which is decently larger than his cage where he can run loose for long periods of time, as we do not need to watch him constantly.

So what does Tiger do with this newfound freedom? He still tries to escape. He'll endlessly dig up the cloth at the edge of the cage, hoping that he'll discover a way out eventually. He'll poke his little nose in between the wires. Sure, the new setup is not ideal, of course he'd rather have the run of the house, but it's a step up from his cage. But he'll spend his time looking for a way out instead of playing while he has time.

How many times am I like Tiger?

End of Semester, etc.

Currently reading: The Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus
by Mary Beth Ingham and Mechthild Dreyer

End of Semester

The end of the semester is nigh. And good thing, too; it's probably been one of the worst semesters I've had. But, in two weeks the 17 hour load will be gone, I will be done with coursework, I can actually start reading the books I'm interested in (ok, continue reading, but without guilt), and soon after I can quit Starbucks and maybe get a job as a tutor, or something else with some positive level of job satisfaction. I was going to hold on until the end of the summer, but I got turned down for the Logic adjunct professorship at Trinity and so I really have no reason to delay the decision.

The New, Improved Medieval Me

Summer reading list: medieval philosophy and theology. I had gotten a bit disenamored of the medievals last fall, but they still had an odd fascination for me. I finally realized why: I was trying to treat them as analytic philosophers. Now, while the level of rigour and analysis is similar, modern philosophy doesn't much like systems. Analytic philosophy in particular tends to be concerned with discrete problems. While analytic philosophers themselves may out the problems together into a larger whole, they don't do this so much in their writings. So I can read Plantinga on modal logic and on epistemology without having to connect the two.

When I had tried this on Scotus, however, I only got bogged down in what seemed to be endless details. It was Aquinas that brought me back, however, through contemporary Thomists Gilson and Clarke; I was able to see the whole which made the parts meaningful. So I thought, I wonder if Scotus' thought was this developed? As Scotus did not leave behind a Summa, it is more difficult to see this in his thought, but the book I'm reading through right now (see top of this post) is helping me to see the bigger picture and getting me re-interested. That, and realizing that Scotus is his own philosopher/theologian and not just an Aquinas alternative.

Thesis

So, with all the reading I want to do, as well with preparation for a doctorate program in the area, I have to wonder if it may be appropriate to change my thesis topic yet again. Sure, I've been telling everyone for a semester that it was going to be Kierkegaard and Shinran, and that's interesting enough, but I have done anything official yet. On the other hand, I need to do something quickly; my one reader is on sabbatical in the Fall, so I have to have at least an idea of the flow of the paper by the end of the summer.

Our New Pet Tiger

Joy and I decided that we wanted a pet, but a dog or a housecat would just cause too many problems. A dog need more attention than we can give right now, and a cat would leap up and destroy all of Joy's knick-knacks. So, enter the Tiger: a lovable lop with tan coloring and black stripes. Intelligent critter; can get out of almost any setup of cardboard boxes we make to pen him in. So most likely we'll need to get a real pen so that he can exercise without constant supervision.

Gotta Have Soul

Currently reading: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

Reuven, when my Daniel was four years old, I saw him reading a story from a book. And I was frightened. . . . It was a story in a Yiddish book about a poor Jew and his struggles to get to Eretz Yisroel before he died. Ah, how that man suffered! And my Daniel enjoyed the story, he enjoyed the last terrible page, because when he finished it he realized for the first time what a memory he had. . . . I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, 'What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!'
- The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

How often am I like Daniel! It's so easy as an intellectual to go through systems of philosophy, to preach the benefits of one set of ethics over another, to go through abstruse metaphysical points as merely a mind. It really is only recently that I seem to be able to feel the suffering in a text at all rather than note it as one piece of information that helps me to understand the story.

(btw, credit for recommending the book, which has been a rewarding read, goes primarily to my uncle, Dr. Corduan, for bringing it up in Western Religions years ago, and secondly to Dr. VanGemeren who mentioned something by Potok in a recent Intro to OT course which reminded me that I should read it)

In other news, I think I got my boss to change my hours at Starbuck's to a more humane time. 4:45 in the morning (at night?) is just not right, and 5:45 isn't much better.

Cause and Effect

I've been ruminating a bit on the nature of causation, and I've been coming to a couple conclusions that I figured I would jot down. I think that the way we think of causation in our scientific age is backward, and it is creating unnecessary problems in the areas of mind-body relations* and freedom of the will**. This won't be an argument for either a soul which is distinct from the body, or for any form of libertarian free will (to perhaps excessively oversimplify, that in order to be free in doing an action, it must have been possible for me to have done the opposite); it is merely an argument that a conceptual shift makes these concepts more plausible.

First, the mind-body problem. It is commonly remarked that we have no idea how an immaterial mind could interact with a material body, so the concept of a mind causing physical motion ends up being incoherent. However, I would suggest that the opposite is the case. Mind-body interaction is precisely where the concept of causation comes in; it is clearer that I cause the billiard ball to move by intentionally picking it up then it is that the billiard ball moves because a pool stick hit it. The willing agent is the primary locus of concepts of causation, with concepts of physical causation being analogous to the primary sense.

Second, the notion of libertarian free will. If I am libertarianly free, then by most accounts there must be at least some actions for which it is possible that I could have done otherwise then I did (though this need not apply to every action, and even this simple phrase is nuanced differently in contracausal- and agent-causal- libertarianism; regardless, the basic idea remains). It has been argued that this is nonsense; I perform actions for causes, and to talk about the indetermination of my actions is simply to say that I act randomly, which surely doesn't get us anywhere. However, I again would suggest that this critique is possible because we put physical, efficient causation as primary (where efficient causation is more or less the typical view of causation in science; A causes B means in some way that A makes B happen). There seems to be a different type of causation, though, which has been ignored as it cannot be reduced to efficient causation. I can write down some words here, and I did it for a reason; I can point to that reason as a sort of "cause". However, what is so incoherent about suggesting that I could have written different words in the same circumstance, while having reasons for those words? Neither act was random, yet neither was determined. In addition, it might be time to recover Aristotle's telic cause; the "cause" of my actions could be said to be their goal, which allows some maneuverability in my acting. Telic causes may not apply to nature (at least, efficient causes seem to be more fashionable), but it may be that efficient causes similarly do not apply to acts of volition in the same way they do to nature.

To go out on even more of a limb (would that be going out on a twig then?), it seems that to some extent, in the case of efficient causation, the effect is not separate from the cause. I'm getting slightly less than analytical here, but I think this is why we shy away from deterministic views of human volition: if my acts are all determined, I don't really exist. I am a lump of causes coming together without remainder.*** If volitional causation is primary then, I think we start approaching a Berkelian view where minds of some sort are the reality of things. The physical world would not exist separately from these minds. This step I think is more of a leap than the previous two, but I think there is something to it.

At any rate, given some of the above discussion contingency would be regarded as acts of volition rather than merely that which is neither necessary nor impossible (and as such, almost random; at very least stuff put together in a sort of piecemeal fashion).****

----
* By "mind", I am referring to not just reason, but also the will, and perhaps primarily the will. I also would contend that reason and will entail emotion. For the curious out there, my own views on the issue fluctuate between Thomism and (a properly conceived) Cartesianism.
** Again, for the curious, my own views here are that of a(n agent-causal-)libertarian, heavily influenced by Duns Scotus.
*** Which seems to allow that while human beings cannot be determined and free, as they would ultimately be determined by something outside of themselves and so not existent, God can be determined (and so incapable of sinning) as God would not be determined by anything outside of Godself and so the same problem would not apply.
**** This idea, which was part of what started my ruminations on these issues, comes directly from Scotus.

Quote of the day:
"If it looks like an Evangelical duck and it quacks like an Evangelical duck, it may not be an Evangelical duck. The quacks may have different semantic content." - Dr. Vanhoozer, in a discussion of Van Til's take on Barth

New Semester

Currently reading: The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright

So, the new semester begins. I'm actually having to go back to tests and textbooks; I think that my independent studies and seminars have made me soft. Although it may be nice to actually have fellow students to talk to - it gets a little lonely being the only person working on certain research interests.

So, here's the schedule for the semester:

• Intro to Old Testament
• Intro to New Testament
• Systematic Theology II: Christ, Sin, and Salvation
• Karl Barth
• Religious Epistemology

I'm looking forward to the last two classes the most; systematic theology had looked interesting, and the subject material certainly is, but I'm currently a bit disappointed while reading the first book for the course. I've gotten used to rigorous argument and analysis, which some theologians don't really seem to use that well. I suppose that they are much better than I am in putting theory into practice and making doctrine relevant; I'm just tired of:

• The awful presentations of medieval views (whether Aquinas by Evangelicals, or Scotus by Radical Orthodoxy, or Augustine by various people)
• Being told how we should all live based on a couple poor inferences (even if the Biblical picture of the person is as a mind-body unity, this doesn't jusify the statement that we need to play sports or we are not "full-orbed" Christians)
• Lack of interaction with various sources (I don't care if one regards the Catholic view of justification and merit to be blatantly wrong; at least take more than a sentence to dismiss it. Aquinas does regard Scripture to be foundational and has read it and written a few commentaries; I think he is most likely fully aware of Ephesians)
• The type of argument that goes something like "The Bible says A; we use similar or the same words to describe B and C, so therefore to reject B and C is to be unbiblical" (*cough* discussions of sovereignty *cough*). This often is attended by a "attempts to dismiss B and C come from being philosophical rather than Biblical," despite the often quite philosophical framework which is being used for the "Biblical" view.

This is not to say that all theologians are of this sort (I like reading many theologians, even at times those who aren't as rigorous; Moltmann comes to mind), but I hear the basic lines often enough that it is getting rather tiring.

Now that I've ripped apart one book, here's one to commend: Intimacy or Integrity by Thomas Kasulis. It's a fascinating study of comparative philsophy and trying to understand different ways of thinking. In particular, he is focusing on inter-cultural conflicts in which the two parties agree on all of the facts, and simply think that the other side is irrational in acting as it does. Kasulis traces this back to a difference in understanding how things relate and the different focuses that the given cultures have; he then takes this insight on an extended thought experiment to show how these different views of relations have implications for epistemology, rational argument, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and politics. I'm mostly interested in the difference between Analytic philosophy and East Asian thought (Kasulis himself developed many of his thoughts on the matter in thinking about Japanese philosophy), but the main points are applicable to many other areas (he brings up a few times the traditional thought patterns ascribed to men and women in Western culture; in addition, I think it would be relevant to differences between Western and Eastern Christianity).

Thesis Topic: Maybe?

I may actually have a working idea for a thesis topic; it wouldn't be the first, or even fifteenth, but it seems the most promising so far. As I have yet to formulate a satisfactory version of the question on its own, the historical genesis of the question may prove more useful (to anyone who hasn't been scared away already). Different traditions refer to a transcendent, ineffable something (or lack of something, or both something and lack of something, or neither something nor lack of something; maybe even all of the above). However, these ineffable transcendents don't seem to be the same (pace Hick); Pseudo-Dionysius, for example, is talking about God while Nagarjuna is talking about the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. Even though surface language appears the same, what allows for this differentiation? Are these thinkers inconsistent, or is there some way to allow for different ineffable transcendents?

To take this a step further, I am looking at Kierkegaard and the Japanese Buddhist Shinran. Both have some degree of apophaticism in their thoughts, and as a consequence stress the inner life of the believer and the way life is lived instead of trying to understand the non-understandable. So the thesis would be looking at a comparative study of these two thinkers, analyzing their solution to the problem of interacting with a transcendent reality, and asking the question of what makes for a Christian life as opposed to a Buddhist life in such frameworks (if there really could be any differentiation; it could turn out to be a reductio for existentialism).

Other than that, I guess there is my life outside of schoolwork too. Joy and I have been taking fencing classes; it's been lots of fun, but it ended last Tuesday :-(. So now we're going to have to look into an intermediate class and/or the fencing club in our area so that we can poke more people with swords.

This Semester

Currently reading: Overcoming Onto-Theology
by Merold Westphal
and
Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

What I'm doing this semester:

• TAing for Intro to Philosophy
  1. An interesting class - it's an intro based mainly on Kant, interpreting philosophy through motifs common in his work. I'm getting to know the professor through the job; he's a stereotypical philosophy prof in a lot of ways (eternally befuddled and unorganized, for example), though he's a cool guy. Considers everything philosophical to come back to Kant (hence the focus of the course).
• Reading course on Duns Scotus
  1. Understudied medieval philosopher, when he's on I think he's even more brilliant than Aquinas. However, he doesn't have a systematic work which makes him more difficult to read, he's more willing to stop with an appeal to authority, and he tends to be more Catholic than Aquinas on the issues which divide Catholics and Protestants.
• Reading course on Japanese Religion
  1. Shinto, Zen, and Pure Land, mainly; currently I'm researching Shinran, founder of the True Pure Land school of Buddhism. A note on certain Zen writers (such as Abe or Nishitani): Zen is hard to understand. German idealism is hard to understand. The combination somehow succeeds in breaking through most of the boundaries that helped one understand either of the parts at all.
• Courses on Theism and Ethical Theories (haven't had a class for these yet, I'll have more to report later.)

One issue I've been struggling with philosophically as of late is how we can speak of God. One the one hand, it seems good to emphasize his otherness, his transcendence, his, well, God-ness, and certain approaches to theology do this well (negative theology, see Pseudo-Dionysius and Eastern Orthodoxy). However, at the same time, if what we say of God has any meaning at all (or, at least, any meaning of which we can be aware; I guess not quite the same thing, but it might as well be), and also if we take seriously the fact that God has revealed himself to us at least in part through language, there must be something positive that we can say about God, some concept (however basic) which we can apply to both God and creatures. Scotus is a proponent of the latter view, and is currently being trounced by certain groups (i.e. Radical Orthodoxy) because of it. While I still have no clue about where to stay in the balancing act, I will present 2 of his arguments for being able to postively predicate things of God univocally (that is, in the same way we do of creatures):

1. If we can only apply negative statments to God, then every such statement equally can be predicated of nothing. In the end, there is no way to separate God from nothing, and we seem to be crypto-atheists (similar to the problem with John Hick in his theory of religious pluralism).
2. There can be no theory of analogical language unless at some point there can be a common term applying to both God and creatures. If there is no such term, then any term used of God must be used entirely differently then it is used of creatures; analogy breaks down into either a form of univocation or equivocation (this is a summary of the argument; if there is more interest, I can present the full thing later).

Scotus' New and Improved Onto-Cosmological Argument

Edit: This argument is being left up mainly for historical purposes. Even the pared down version which I present below leaves out an important step, and even without this flaw doesn't have the force of the argument which I initially thought I had.

*Danger: Modal Logic Warning*

I've been reading through Scotus' argument for the existence of God, and given the strong modal tendencies of it, I figured I would try to find a version amenable to modern modal logic (not that medieval and modern modal logic are the same, though possible world semantics may be able to be traced back to Scotus' thought). His argument goes essentially like this (greatly simplified - Scotus was always one for details):

1. The are orders of causes in which A causes B to cause anything (essentially ordered causes, as opposed to accidentally ordered causes in which A may cause B in some way but then B can act on its own).
2. It is possible that there is a primary essential cause (there is no contradiction in asserting this).
3. Such a cause would be uncaused.
4. Anything that is uncaused and possible must exist.
5. This primary essential cause must exist.

That at least is the short version. Based on the above, and inspired by Plantinga's version of the ontological argument, I have developed the following

1. It is logically possible that if p is contingent, the contingency of p could imply that necessarily p could (materially) imply G. That is, it is logically possible that given a contingent thing, it would not exist when God does not.
2. If p exists actually and is contingent, then G exists actually.

It seems to have ever so slightly more force than Plantinga's argument. At very least, the main premise here is more confusing and thus provides more stalling time in searching for another argument. However, it still suffers from the defect of not saying much about God. I'll most likely work on a stronger version of the argument to supplement this.

For those who want to see the inner workings (where P indicates possibility, N indicates necessity, and -> indicates material implication):

By reductio:
1) P( (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G) ),0 (that is, at world 0) (by hypothesis; though I'm working on an argument for it. I thought I had something, but I had mixed up a P with an N. I wonder how God feels about falling prey to a typo?)
2) p, 0 (by hypothesis)
3) P-p, 0 (by hypothesis)
4) (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G), 1 (by possiblity of 1)
5) -G, 0 (reductio hypothesis)
Now, either (N-p v Np), or N(p -> G). If N(p -> G) = N(-p v G), then:
6a) N(-p v G), 1
7a) -p v G, 0
both of which lead to contradictions (by 2 and 5). Next, let us look at (N-p v Np). First, N-p:
6b) N-p, 1
7b) -p, 0
which leads to a contradiction by 2. Finally, Np:
6c) Np, 1
7c) -p, 2 (by 3)
8c) p, 2
Another contradiction. Therefore, if there is anything which exists and is contingent, and it is logically possible that there could be something which always exists when something contingent exists, then that thing actually exists. Put more strongly, if it is logically possible that God would exist whenever something contingent exists, then God exists.