May 24, 2007
Quote(s) of the Day: Selections From Berkeley's Letter to Sir John James
In the course of a bit of research on Berkeley's views on the epistemology of religion, I have just come across a little letter Berkeley wrote to one Sir John James, dated June 7, 1741. James was, apparently, an Anglican living in Boston who was considering converting to Roman Catholicism. While for some reason (perhaps because he was Irish) Berkeley is often mistakenly believed to have been a member of the Roman Catholic Church, he was, in fact, a member of the clergy of the Church of England, and wrote against Roman Catholicism on a number of occasions, this being...
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May 22, 2007
Kenneth L. Pearce, BA BAS
You may have noticed that posting has been extremely light lately. I haven't been busy so much as disoriented. Graduation was last week (whence the title of this post!), my assorted housemates have been moving out, I've done some moving myself already, and am going to finish moving this evening. However, I'm not starting work for another few weeks, so once I get settled down in my new place and my head stops spinning, I expect there to be a flurry of postings. Here are some things you can look for over the next few weeks: I've already started writing...
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May 11, 2007
Quote of the Day
I am no feminist (my wife will confirm my impeccable Neanderthal credentials); I have strong views on women's ordination; but I am saddened by the way Reformed church culture so often tramples its women underfoot with its mindless identification of biblical manhood with something akin to John Wayne and its assumption that all Christian women should make Mary Poppins look domestically incompetent. - Carl Trueman, Reformation21.
I'm not sure where these attitudes come from...
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May 2, 2007
The Ontological Economy of Idealism
The following is an excerpt from a draft of my metaphysics term paper, which I thought might be of interest to readers. The paper presents an idealist theory of properties under which two things are said to have a property if those two things are or would be indistinguishable under some specified conditions. I call this account, fittingly enough, the "conditional indistinguishability" analysis of properties. After presenting the conditional indistinguishability account, I discuss the ontological economy of the idealist theory from which it arises, as compared especially to the currently dominant physicalist assumptions, but also to substance dualism: The theory...
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