Category: Uncategorized

Over the last year I have been introduced to the work of Edward Feser, a philosopher and writer from California. I read two of his books this last year, and recommend them both.  The first was ‘Aquinas: A Beginners Guide’ which is a great introduction to Aquinas that includes a powerful argument against complexity ID arguments.  The second was ‘The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism’, which is a really well executed book.   Much of his work is in the philosophy of mind, and chapter 4 of his Aquinas book would be of particular interest to students who take that Huenemann course.

The link here is to his comments on “neuro-babble.”  Philosopher Tyler Burge, in a recent op-ed in the NY Times, perhaps coined the term “neurobabble” which he called only an “illusion of understanding.” “Neurobabble” is the excited talk of a certain kind of materialist who takes every new discovery in neuroscience to be a demonstration of the the mind’s reducibility to the neural processes.

Feser thinks that one cause of neurobabble is ignorance of the Aristotelian-Thomist position (he refers to it as A-T).  Most materialists think the only alternatives are Cartersian dualism (usually given in unfair caricature) and property dualism, both of which travel with serious mind-body interaction problems.  What is always ignored in the debate is the A-T position (hylomorphic dualism).

For those unfamiliar with A-T, Feser does a nice job of introducing an Aristotelian approach here.  I won’t recast the argument here, what makes Feser so good is his clear and accessible writing and I won’t try to improve upon it.  But, for summary:  Feser explains hylomorphic dualism and contrasts it with other dualisms and with materialism, arguing for its superiority (no interaction problems, not reductionist, etc).  Since the Aristotelian-Thomist position requires bodily activity as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for acts of the human intellect, the A-T gladly accepts the findings of modern neuro-science, “not as a reluctant concession forced on the theory by the successes of modern neuroscience, but, on the contrary, precisely as a prediction of the A-T position as it has been understood from the beginning.  Were Aristotle and Aquinas to be made familiar with the sorts of neuroscientific discoveries frantically trumpeted by materialists as if they should be an embarrassment to the dualist, they would respond, with a shrug: “Of course.  Told you so.””

Feser concludes, “The fact is that Aristotelian-Thomistic hylemorphic dualism is the theory most clearly consistent with all of the philosophical and neuroscientific evidence.”

Galen Strawson recently posted his review of Dennett’s book. I’m linking to it here because so many of the students who were in Philosophy 4410 last term have expressed a continued interest in making sense of the topic. Happy exploring!

You might want to check out this review of the book A Tenth of a Second: A History by Jimena Canales. Here’s just a sample:

Canales ends with an account of the debate between Bergson and Einstein in which a few references to the tenth of a second or the personal equation occur, although they are not central to the debate. A psychologist participant, Henri Piéron, in a public confrontation referred to the personal equation. Bergson refers to it in a late essay. However, Canales surprisingly does relatively little with Bergson’s reference to the cinema as a model for time consciousness. (She neglects the story that Bertrand Russell, who had never seen a film, went to one only to examine Bergson’s analogy.)

So there’s a new edition coming out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (coupled with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) where the “n-word” is systematically replaced by “slave”. (See the article here.) The main idea of the editor Alan Gribben is that people aren’t reading one of the greatest works of American literature merely because the work has frequent use of a word that now carries a tremendous emotional charge it didn’t carry back in Twain’s day. So, he says, take out the offending word, and encourage people to read the great work. (Note, of course, the obvious point that this is only a single edition of the work, and there will be plenty, yes, plenty of tamper-proof editions of the original work available for the rest of time.)

I say good for Gribben and NewSouth books. They are of course at the receiving end of a withering blast of scorn from textual purists who think the replacement constitutes censorship or some deep violation of a virginal text. Hogwash. Indeed, an argument can be made that retaining the “n-word” violates Twain’s text, since the word itself has changed in meaning over time. Certainly Twain never meant eyebrows to be raised every time the word made an appearance, and so retaining it fundamentally alters the good humor of the text. But the main point is this: if such a replacement allows Mark Twain to enter the public schools of America, then so be it!

And, yes, I could even go for renaming Melville’s work Moby Richard if it meant people would actually read the thing.

USU philosophy alumnus Sohrab Ahmari has this opinion piece in The Guardian taking on a historian’s claim that “Human rights groups are spear-carrier[s] for the ‘exceptionalist’ belief that the west has a providential right to intervene wherever in the world it wishes.” Ahmari replies with the oh-so-imperialist sentiment that maybe all kinds of people would like to enjoy basic human rights.