What is the difference between everyday abstractions, propositions, and definitions and then the same things in the hands of the philosophers? The answer is that philosophers tend to fall, somehow, someway, into the error of reification. That is, they try to answer the question of whether “thus and such” exists through some kind of metaphysical …
Living Simply
Much philosophical endeavor is occupied with trying to answer questions that ought never to have been asked. I am reminded of Bill Cosby’s old joke about it. Philosophy majors want to ask questions like “why is there air?” when the PE majors knew the answer already. Air is for blowing up volleyballs. The world is …
Abstractions are Bad
Abstractions don’t exist, if by existence you mean having a certain weight or color. Neither do propositions, if by existence you mean material embodiment. And of course, by such criteria, God the Father doesn’t exist either. But of course, abstractions still function just fine, provided the people using them are grounded in an incarnational and …
One Foot Nailed to the Floor
Chesteron once said (Chesterton always once said) that the purpose of an open mind was the same as the purpose of an open mouth — it is meant to close on something. A man who is not closed in certain respects is a man who was never open in the right kind of way. The …
Old Slewfoot’s Kitchen
In response to my postings on propositions taken as simple statements of fact, one objection was raised that wondered who on earth would think that emergent leaders would challenge “statements”? Well, if we are talking about statements that are true, I do. They do, and their books are full of such questioning. Emergent writers are …
As Logocentric As It Gets
I rise in praise of propositions, but not the propositions of bad philosophers who try to reify everything they touch. Rather, I praise the propositions of the competent and godly English teacher, and, although this is not the point of our current discussion, I also praise clauses, imperatives, nouns, verbs, alphabets, jots and tittles. A …
False Alternatives
Emergent thinkers like to believe that they are advocating a move from the “absolute to the authentic.” But of course, the fact that these are a couple of adjectives being used as abstractions means that we do not yet know what we are talking about. Moving from the “absolute” to the “authentic” blends right in …
Good Old Justus
In one sense, postmodernism is far worse than a particular heresy, because at least the old heretics made truth claims. The kind of universal corrosive that postmodernism brings with it affects everything, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It rots out lies as well as the truth; but since a lie is a perverse tribute to the …
Flitcraft
Among my odder pursuits, I would have to include my reading through an Anglo/Saxon dictionary (mostly for entertainment). You learn things that way which I cannot imagine learning in any other way. Anyhow, one of the words I recently came across was the Old English word for logic — which is flitcraft. I much prefer …
There It Is
As you may have surmised, this concludes my old posts from the Vision 20/20 list discussion of a few years back. They are now accessible in the archives of this blog, which was the point.