Category Archives: Critique of philosophy

PHILOSOPHY, SCIENTISM, AND DEEP REALITY?

There is plenty in philosophical literature which is not just analysis or elaboration of the work of science, and which is not modeled on science. What I stress is that philosophical discourse should at least strive for honesty, clarity and coherence, and that philosophers should not make obscurity a virtue, and should not offer vagueness and equivocation as profundity. I don’t have much patience for the pretentious type of speculative metaphysics which often parades as profound philosophy.

More Mad Men and Philosophers – Illusions and Delusions of Freedom

I prefer to avoid the term “free will” because it suggests some mysterious faculty of mind which operates independently of genetic and environmental factors. I don’t think there is such a thing; and it seems to be a mistaken turn in discussions of problems of freedom and determinism.
I prefer to talk about freedom in relation to choice and actions that humans do. I don’t know what it means to talk about a ‘free will’ which does not result in some degree of freedom in deciding between alternative actions, and in sometimes being able to do what we desire to do, or what we judge to be in our best interest.

Robert Wright’s “Evolution of God”: An Exercise in Ambiguity

Although Robert Wright’s work in his latest book, The Evolution of God, offers much to stimulate and challenge students of history, ethics, and religious philosophy, there is much here that is extremely confusing, even bewildering. Case in point is his tendency to equivocate and flip-flop intellectually on such key questions as those concerning the type of historical account that his book develops and that concerning the nature of the “God,” whose evolution he claims to describe.