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eternalstoke
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Name: Tommy
Country: United States
Metro: Honolulu
Birthday: 6/21/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Surfing, Literature, Philosophy, Depth Psychology, Mythology, Roman Catholic moral theology, Natural Law tradition, medical ethics and bioethics.
Expertise: I can make you a perfect cup of coffee, discuss the classical fourfold causation in Thomistic action theory, and give you a complete physical exam!
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
3/3/2005
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| I attended a clinical lecture this morning by an esteemed neurologist, who, in evaluating a case of ciguatoxin poisoning, elaborated on the history of the toxin in Hawaiian culture. The toxin comes from reef fish that feed on reef algae, where the dinoflagellates grow- but the Hawaiians did not know this. When they dipped their weapons in the wading pools infested with the toxin, to make them more lethal, they thought that immoral persons had drowned or been slain there. But now we know better.
In contradiction to this, from G.K. Chesterton's 'Orthodoxy':
"But we cannot say why an egg could turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As ideas, the egg and the chicken are further away from one another than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken; whereas some princes do suggest bears... Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there myst be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, where there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country."
So... while there is a connection between dinoflagellates and ciguatera poisoning, the connection is no MORE sensical than if an immoral Hawaiian had been slain there. While it is true that the Hawaiian makes a 'category mistake' in giving a moral explanation for a natural event, this is no sillier than what modern scientists do, which is to give a physical explanation for a moral event. (Your conscience is a product of survival + heredity, etc.) If there ever was a 'category mistake' to poke fun at- let's poke fun at that one. | | |
| Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. And the natural way to learn a language, is to first speak it, then worry about grammar later on. This book accomplishes just that, easing you into grammatical understanding, but not before offering rich dividends. This is probably the most prayed prayer in all of human history, speaking worldly, judging from Christianity's overall numbers, and widespread monasteries. This is also the language it has been most commonly prayed in:
Pater noster, qui es in coelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum,
fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,
et dimmite nobis debita nostra,
sicut et nos dimmitimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem,
sed libera nos a malo.
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A leftie I caught last week.
Also, my first ever surfing photo courtesy of my beautiful bride. | | |
| According to scientific naturalism, (the assertion that nature is all that exists, or can be studied) physical phenomena ought to be given physical explanations. Whereas the ancient Greeks attributed a lightning bolt to the wrath of zeus, in modern times we have learned to think primarily of meteorological explanations. The ancient Greeks were making a 'category mistake,' confusing the physical with the spiritual. Some scientific naturalists might say that even though spiritual explanations may serve to explain spiritual phenomena, we ought to intentionally separate all that is physical from all that is spiritual, including explanations for each. Some would use the principle of 'Occam's Razor' in defense of this, a principle which forbids the multiplying of explanations, and which supposedly forbids spiritual explanations when physical ones will suffice.
But
1) since spiritual things are higher than physical things, spiritual explanations may serve to explain both spiritual and physical phenomena. A lightning bolt may be explained by both the wrath of God, meteorology, or both. no effect is greater than its cause, and if a spiritual thing is greater than a physical thing, it may cause a spiritual effect, a physical effect, or both.
2) there are pseudo-spiritual phenomena which seem more reasonably given spiritual explanations. two examples of this are human consciousness, and the intrinsic binding authority of the human conscience. (does anyone say that it's sometimes okay to disobey one's conscience? despite the fact that it presumably has a natural origin, according to the naturalists?) these sorts of phenomena ought not be given physical explanations (according to Occam's razor) when they can be suitably given spiritual explanations. That is, assuming of course, that science in general, conceived in a general way as a sort of searching for explanations, and Occam's Razor in particular, do not forbid the use of spiritual explanations for observable phenomena. Presumably, if a phenomena is observable, whether by sense (lightning bolt) or by psychological or logical intuition (conscience), then it may be given any sort explanation required by it. The modern scientific naturalist may thus by criticized for the prioritizing the type of explanation, (physical over spiritual) as opposed to prioritizing the necessity of finding any sort of explanation at all, for any phenomena which is at all observable.
3) It is far sillier to take a spiritual phenomena, such as the human conscience, and give it a physical explanation, than it is silly to take a physical one (lightning) and give it a spiritual explanation (the wrath of zeus). Why? Because, if Occam's razor's strict interpretation may be disobeyed, then all physical phenomena may have dual explanations (wrath and zeus AND meteorology), whereas spiritual phenomena cannot have physical explanations at all! (blind, ruthless evolution ---> authority of human conscience?! i don't think so) Thus the modern scientific naturalist is sillier than the ancient Greek. They both confuse basic categories, but the modern does so at the expense of his sanity. The ancient Greek merely saw the mythological, poetic impressiveness of every natural phenomena, whereas the modern naturalist sees the impressiveness of his own godlike ability to give virtuoso-like explanations (I think of Freud's 'ladies and gentlemen!' at the start of his lectures) of seemingly spiritual phenomena.
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| So I spent my first week as a working doctor, not working much, and mostly figuring out how to kill roaches around our new little cottage. Five poison smoke bombs were detonated last night and, so far, there are no survivors. Betsy and I both have intense roach phobias reaching all the way back into our childhoods... now we've got to stay strong for our own daughter. Yikes.
I read Kreeft's entire 'Socrates Meets' series in about a month. Socrates meets Machiavelli, Sartre, Descartes, and Marx. I've never devoured so many books so fast. Socrates Meets Hume comes out later this summer, and for the first time ever, I've known about a book, and waited for it to be released. The series is fantastic because it not only trains you in genuine analytic skills, but also seriously engages the modern thinker and exposes the reader in detail to the classic they wrote.
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