Making Good of Better Intentions

So much for good intentions. I haven’t exactly made good of my hope to post more frequently. I don’t like purely personal updates, but most of my personal life is academic now anyway.

What I’ve Been Reading (and Writing)

I’ve been reading mostly metaphysics and epistemology for the past three months, and I love it. Currently writing (more accurately, shirking at the moment) a precis (a short summary of an article, chapter or book) on “The Incoherence of Empiricism”–which is an insightful series of arguments by George Bealer (Yale) that seriously undermine empiricism. Empiricism is just the view that our only evidence for beliefs (and therefore, theories) are experience and observation. This leaves out intuition, and notably, those particular beliefs that “we just know” on the basis of intuition.

There are apparently various forms of arguments against empiricism that it begs the question (assumes what its trying to prove), but Bealer hopes to show that it’s also self-defeating–it undermines itself by its own principles. So even if it didn’t beg the question, it’d be incoherent. Here’s a bit from my essay that I rather like (it’s summarizing one of Bealer’s points):

Empiricists have prima facie evidence for doubting that theories deviating from the epistemic norm are justified.
Empiricism deviates from the epistemic norm.
Therefore, empiricists have reason to doubt that empiricism is justified.

Fun, huh?

On other fronts, I’m reading Substance and Modern Science, by Richard Connell for my metaphysics term paper (due to our illustrious professor, J.P. Moreland). This an interesting little book on, well, substances, and the contention of modern science that they do not exist.

Also reading for a term paper on Hebrew wisdom and poetry for my Old Testament class. I’m synthesizing Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiasties and Song of Songs over 20 pages. It’s a topic better suited for a series of books, but I’m hoping to narrow my discussion with an examination of theodicy (a response to the problem of evil) in these books. I’ve had a long-time personal interest in Old Testament wisdom literature, so this is fun.

Finally, another epistemology paper – one that I’m sorely behind on reading for: religious epistemology. I haven’t narrowed my topic from there, so maybe another post sometime soon will help with that.

(Lani’s doing the metaphysics and OT paper [her's is on the Pentateuch], too; and she’s working on a really awesome paper on “An Aristotelian Formulation of the Role of Community in Moral Formation”–which sounds scrumtrilescient. I can’t wait to read it. I’ll have to post some of it to share with you, dear reader.)

Our Child

I couldn’t possibly represent what’s been going on inside of Lani’s body here. A child is there; moving around (kicking her in the bladder), feeding off something like 24 vitamins a day (not an exaggeration), forming neural connections at an exponential rate.

Name frontrunners:

If XX: Nan
If XY: Benjamin

Middle names are up in the air, but we’d like to use family names.

I’ve had more thoughts and feelings about all this, which I’ll have to collect and prepare, then slowly publish here. I don’t know how else to properly put them to, er… paper? html? Aye.

But for now, dats da haps.

Picking up the velocity here…

I’ve been on hiatus, huh?

Lots going on, really. We moved 400 miles southward on August 1 (note: I arrived with a 16′ truck-full of belongings, and, ah… no where to put it). We ended up down the street from Biola, where we’re attending grad school at Talbot School of Theology. Lani and I are both enrolled in the MA in Philosophy.

We miss people and places in the Bay Area, but overall, we are very happy with this life change. We’re both flourishing in the academic environment.

Lani’s put on about 10 pounds recently… but it’s mostly because there’s a living human being inside of her now. See my recent “Ultra” post. Got another one coming too.

I’ve got a lot on my mind, what with all of these changes, and hope to be posting a good deal more frequently…

Specifically, I’m hoping for a couple new series:

1. What I’m Reading: I’ve always wanted to process the stuff that I read up here, just to put thoughts to… ahh… not paper, but… something like it… megabytes? So philosophy, theology, literature or otherwise, I’m looking forward to doing that.

2. Thoughts on the Child: I’ve had quite a lot of thoughts on fatherhood and early human life over the past two years. Some things that nag me way to much to leave unsaid.

Here’s to picking up the velocity once again…

‘Being dead’ is so last season!

Exactly.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Dear Reader, dear,
I’m hearing some stuff about the end of the university, or, maybe it’s the beginning… ? Well, I don’t want either. And I’m just starting up again, so give me a break! (If I haven’t told you yet, we decided, and we’re both enrolling in Talbot’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics MA program.)

I’m talkin’ about stuff like this and this. I’m sure there’s more of it, too. We now live among a culture and people which, in this era, LOVE to pronounce the death and end of things. ‘God is dead!’ ‘Blogging is dead!’ ‘Eating food is dead!’ ‘Sleeping is so last season!’ I think this is reflective of the temptation of immediacy – to pick up and speed along. Maybe there’s even some “chronological snobbery” built into that (this “snobbery” is a term of C.S. Lewis, borrowed from fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield).

But the concerns about humanities departments (philosophy, religion, theology, english, etc.) “dying” don’t worry me. I’m not worried about going back to school. In fact, I’m more sure about this than LOTS of other decisions in my 26-year life. I’ll continue to pursue a patient spiritual, intellectual, social and academic lifestyle; and the foundation for this patience is the inherent value of thinking and contemplating (v. “to think long and lovingly” – thanks Dave Evans for that) about the world and everything, physical and non-, in it.

If there is any worry for anyone at all, the source must be the reigning (and thoroughly unwelcome, I say) pragmatism of all generations. Earlier in my life I would have said that cultural pragmatism (the kind that suggests going to college merely for a job, to make money) is a generational thing. Silly baby-boomers. But I’m starting to think it’s not generational. Worry comes in all shapes and sizes and ages and so does the pragmatism that dons the crown deep below the surface of that worry.

So I’m rebelling. I’m going to actually enjoy grad school, and I’m going to enjoy the debt we shall incur and the job scarcity and low salaries that follow from a life of academics. I’m hoping to learn a little more about the Classic, undying value for the intellectual life of mind, heart and soul, and what that means for the details of my life.

It’s gotta be a media thing – ironically enough, since ‘News is dead!” is not an uncommon hidden meaning in headlines these days. In fact, how’s “News is old!” for the next NYT headline? Double irony!!

So, media giants! you soothsayers of cultural fate! Will anything else be dead tomorrow? Pragmatists! you worrisome lot! Is anything else regrettably last season?

More importantly, and for the rest of us, is anything alive today? is anything eternal today?