Friday, September 28, 2007

Just an Idea on the Fact/Value divide

(P1) Judgments of value are non-(correspondence-)truth-apt because value-realism is false.
(P2) Judgments of fact are (correspondence-)truth-apt because (physical?-)realism is true.

Rebuttal to (P1) & (P2):
Our full cognitive-affective capacities are involved in every factual judgment we make about the way the world is. That is, evaluative and factual judgments are not separable in ordinary practice. Evaluative judgments are part and parcel of the way we conceptualize, categorize, organize the (physical, factual) world of our experience. (For example, we see the objects we see because they are important to us.) Either this means that judgments of fact are too non-objective to be correspondence-truth-apt (i.e., my claims involve the rejection of (physical?-)realism, or else this means that judgments of (moral) value are objective enough (in virtue of their intimate association with judgments of fact) to be correspondence-truth-apt (i.e., my claims involve the affirmation of value-realism).

Possible response to the above suggestion:
While a modest (physical?-)realism can accomodate our subjective contribution to experience, what makes it count as a realism is that there are objective, subject-independent thingummies which place limits on our cognitive behaviors with respect to conceptualizing the world of our experience (e.g., our defining discrete objects in our experience). We can still sensibly reject value-realism by denying that there are any such objective, subject-independent thingummies which place limits on our cognitive behaviors with respect to morally evaluating objects in the world of our experience.

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* (The OED entry for thingummy is better, but probably not something most can directly link to:

Also 8 thing-o-me, thing-o'-me, 9 thing-o-my, thingamy, -ammy, -ummie, -umy. [f. THINGUM + -Y (?dim.).]

Used (in undignified speech) to indicate vaguely a thing (or person) of which the speaker cannot at the moment recall the name, or which he is at a loss or does not care to specify precisely; a ‘what-you-may-call-it’. Also in extended form thingummytight (-tite, etc.).

1796 F. BURNEY Camilla III. 259 Poor miss thing-o'-me's hat is spoilt already. 1803 FESSENDEN Terr. Tractor. IV. (ed. 2) 174 note, The little whalebone thingamy which the Duke of Queensbury run at New Market. 1807 W. IRVING Salmag. (1824) 38, I mean only to tune up those little thing-o-mys, who represent nobody but themselves. 1819 ‘R. RABELAIS’ Abeillard & Heloisa 101 A passport to a brilliant court Where all great thingummies resort. 1862 THACKERAY Philip viii, What a bloated aristocrat Thingamy has become! 1904 Times 11 Jan. 12/2 Mr. So-and-so has..‘entrusted’ its little carcase to Mr. Thingummy, birdstuffer. 1937 G. FRANKAU More of Us xvii. 177 Quick. The small green phial. It's in my bathroom. In the thingummytightThe corner cupboard. 1939 J. CARY Mister Johnson 23 What's the trouble? Why, it's thingummytite, aren't you? 1977 D. CLARK Gimmel Flask viii. 147 We've got a thingumitite with us...a sort of visionary. Young cops with fantouche ideas! 1980 D. BOGARDE Gentle Occupation i. 21 Nothing in the taps of course because the terrorists had buggered up the hydroelectric thingummytites.

)

* I probably should use this specialized (specially used that is, when you want to be absolutely general) metaphysical term more often in my writing. I recall disagreeing with Dr. C over using "entity" or "subsistence" in my Senior paper on the Trinity. I rebelliously stuck with "entity" I think (to refer to a Person), because I thought using "subsistence" involved me in metaphysical claims I didn't intend to make (of course, that was why Dr. C was trying to get me not to use "entity"!). I really should have used "thingummy"--that captures precisely my intended meaning in that context.

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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

Read the full post.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Madeleine L'Engle

The Christian author, Madeleine L'Engle, died on the 6th of this month, I just found out.

Here is a tribute to L'Engle by her friend and editor Luci Shaw (published on christianitytoday.com). There are links at the bottom of this page including past CT interviews with L'Engle, her personal website, and a news release regarding her death in the NY Times.

The most memorable & meaningful books of L'Engle's I have read are:

  • A Wind in the Door
(this is the best one of the four I grew up on: the others are A Wrinkle in Time, Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters)
  • A Live Coal in the Sea
There are also some good things in Walking on Water, but this book never made my list of favorites.

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"He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

    Read the full post.

    Friday, September 14, 2007

    Promised Update

    OK, one week and several hours later, here's a brief update on last weekend and this week.

    The NW Ohio Mennonite Men's Bike-Hike was fun. I biked a little over 30 miles, I believe, on Saturday--mostly on a flat bike & buggy trail. We were in Holmes County, where it seems everybody is some kind of Amish or Mennonite. Hearing a little bit about the different groups made me feel a renewed sadness about the divisions in the Church. As much as Anabaptists value community, they've/we've (I haven't solved that identity issue yet) been really good at *separating*.

    We went to Behalt, a Mennonite-Amish heritage center with a big mural. It was kind of interesting. We were rushed, though.

    Sunday it was too rainy to bike. Saturday it rained a lot, too, just never on us. The radar on guys' cell phones (!) showed that the storms stayed around us pretty much all day--but we never got any rain. Also, my bike held up well on Saturday although its tires were showing signs of considerable age. (When did I buy that? Was I in high school yet? Have I ever replaced its tires or inner tubes?) The inner tube blew overnite after the trip, so it was a good thing we weren't biking on Sunday. Now I have to replace it (which I should have done before the trip, really). I know that Dr. S would be comfortable crediting Providence with several of these things (I often fondly recall his passionately asserting in class once ... ah, never mind. He used rather strong language. Stripped of emotive content and rephrased, he said that everything was God's doing, so he didn't have a problem attributing....everything to God's doing). I have to satisfy myself with noncommital wonder at these things. Ah, the mysteries of Providence.

    I have not been as disciplined with my time this week. I did better Wednesday and since. However, today was "undisciplined" in the sense that I once again spent *all* afternoon doing Logic stuff in the computer lab when I wanted to finish a paper.... Grr... My own fault.

    Love & Peace to all.

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    "He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

    Read the full post.

    Friday, September 7, 2007

    Weekend Retreat

    After a couple of posts containing no original material (but, of course, the selection and re-presentation of these sense-impressions is an original act of consciousness on my part!), I figure that I ought to give a personal update, as well.

    Today marks the end of the third week of classes here. I am *close* to finishing a paper that I wanted to complete by the end of this week, but I don't think it's going to happen because I'm leaving on a retreat this weekend with some guys from TMC.

    I'm not entirely sure what the retreat will involve, except outdoor camping and biking. Unfortunately, it looks like rain....

    I had a very nice time last night having coffee with a friend here in Toledo (other than my wife). We both remarked how nice it was to have an intentional relationship where we are now in our lives. I'm very happy about this.

    I'll probably say something about my retreat experience on my next post.

    Happy Friday!

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    "He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

    Read the full post.

    Sojourners' Surge for Peace

    http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/09/a-surge-of-prayers-by-jim-wall.html

    Quote:

    Next week, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will report to Congress on the progress of the troop "surge" and the war effort in general. That report promises to catalyze an intense national debate on the floor of the U.S Congress, in the media, and across the nation. Is it time to end the war? If so, how? Or should we persevere until we “win” the war? And what would that mean?
    It will be a great debate on what is clearly a life-and-death issue for both Americans and Iraqis. It is a debate in which much is at stake. All next week, this blog will be focusing on Iraq and the future of this war, which has become such a disaster.

    But as people of faith, we believe the place to start is prayer. Only prayer can soften hearts and open the way to peace and reconciliation. So, as General Petraeus testifies, we're planning to match his surge with one of our own – 20,000 prayers for Congress to bring an end to this war.
    [...]

    So we would like to begin this great debate with prayer. Prayers for peace and prayers for the wisdom and courage to end this war in the ways that are most protective of human life, especially of the innocent. Our nation's political leaders are listening to the faith community as never before. We've spoken to several members of Congress who are considering reading a selection of your prayers for peace into the Congressional Record.
    [...]

    Will you be a part of this surge of prayer for peace? Click here to let your senators and representatives know that you're praying for them.


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    "He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

    Read the full post.

    Wednesday, September 5, 2007

    Nevertheless...


    Now Reading: Nevertheless: The Varieties and Shortcomings of Religious Pacifism, by John Howard Yoder (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1992).

    Ch. 2: The Pacifism of the Honest Study of Cases

    ("Just-War Pacifism")

    "A second difficulty is that in many cases, having stated such a doctrine seems to have had the effect of excusing people from applying it carefully. They think the fact that there exists a doctrine of the just war constitutes a justification of war in general. However, it actually constitutes a denial that war can ever be generally justified. The amassing of armament for the potentially justified case of war is not matched by creating institutions or techniques for the control of the use of arms in the other cases.

    "Thus the existence of the doctrine has tended to be taken as a proof, when as a matter of fact it should have been meant as a question. Hence, great numbers of Christians in the mainstream denominations assume that the theologians have given them grounds for a good conscience in preparing for war and waging it. Yet this is not at all the case. They feel that the recent groundswell of selective objection to war is revolutionary, when in fact it is a retrieval of traditional commitments." (p. 25)

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    "He Himself is our Peace." (Eph 2)

    Read the full post.