July 9, 2010
Authority, Authoritativeness, and Objectivity
I've just finished reading John Foster's new book, A World For Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism. Foster had previously defended idealism in his 1982 The Case for Idealism, and many of the basic arguments are the same, though I think the structure is cleaner and easier to grasp. (I've also just finished reading the restored version of Stranger in a Strange Land, so every time I write 'Foster' I'm thinking of the archangel - but that's beside the point.) The main motivation behind Foster's idealism, all the way back to 1982, is the thought that if anything is to...
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Topic(s):
Authoritativeness
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Authority
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Contemporary Thinkers
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Ecclesiology
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Epistemology
,
Ethics
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Idealism/Phenomenalism
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John Foster
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Metaphysics
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Ontology
,
Philosophy
,
Realism
,
Roman Catholic Church
,
The Church
,
Theology
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March 29, 2008
Berkeley: Phenomenalist or Platonist?
Commentators have long recognized the existence of two distinct strains of thought in Berkeley's discussions of how our perceptions give rise to something that is properly called a world. According to the phenomenalist strain, the world is quite simply composed of perception and it becomes a world, rather than simply an unrelated collection of perceptions, by means of the orderliness with which God causes perceptions. According to the Platonist strain, the world (and each object in it) has an archetype in the divine mind and our perceptions are perceptions
of the world because what we perceive is an "ectype" of that archetype...
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February 2, 2008
The Idealist Strategy
There is a particular strategy of argument generally employed by idealists in their arguments against materialism/physicalism/scientific realism and/or substance dualism. The strategy originates primarily with Berkeley. Some of the Parmenides fragments sound similar, but, absent context, it is not possible to determine exactly what he intended. Hume and Kant developed their metaphysical systems largely in response to it, and it is similar to the arguments of the so-called "modern Idealists" which
Moore set out to refute. Finally, the strategy is, in recent literature, explicitly adopted in John Foster's
The Case for Idealism, which I am currently reading. The strategy goes like this...
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