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.

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* 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.