- Nov 12, 2006 - Metaphysics 2
- Review of last class
- Ultimate Reality: God
- World
- Dualism, created good, fallen, to be redeemed
- Abstract entities have real, non spatial, non temporal existence
- Man: Created in image of God, fallen, some redeemed by Christ
- Other Views of Reality
- Monism
- Physicalism
- Ultimate Reality
- Not the God of the Bible
- Variety, creative ways to obviate God
- Matter, Energy, Strings
- Magnetism, Gravity, Strong, Weak Nuclear Force as yet unexplained
- Tendency Towards Reductionism
- Methodological (Ockham's Razor)
- Reduce to the simplest possible, but no simpler
- Karl Popper's version
- Simpler theories are more easily testable
- Linguistic
- The average family has 2.5 children
- Add the children and divide that number by the number of families and you get 2.5
- What happened?
- Red is a color
- Red things are colored things
- What happened?
- Maybe we don't need 'redness' any more
- Scientific
- "Greedy" (Strong Ontological) vs
- Realith is nothing more than zero-dimensional objects that we call particles
- Reality is nothing more than one-dimentional extended objects that we call strings
- Redness is nothing more than a wavelength
- Pain is nothing more than a state of the brain
- "reasonable" (Weak Ontological)
- Heat is explained by kinetic energy
- The structure of water molecules is sufficient to explain wetness
- World
- Matter
- Abstract Entities
- Types
- Properties
- Numbers
- Propositions
- A triangle is similar to another iff the angles are congruent
- Sets
- The set of English letters
- Relations
- Some options available to physicalist
- Mental entities are really physical entities?
- Properties and relations are really material?
- Abstract entities are physical entities?
- Some positions Taken
- Extreme nominalism
- Properties do not exist, only specific things and words describing them
- Nominalism
- Properties are that which is brought to mind by excluding other things
- "Redness" is the set of all properties "red" for each thing that is red
- Contra realism
- Properties are universal
- Christians are realists
- Mathematical constructionism
- Math is invention, not discovery
- Induction not allowed
- Man
- Just another animal
- Emergence
- Hard Determinism
- Neodarwinism
- Parts
- What changes?
- How do they change?
- How does evolution happen?
- Speciation
- Species become incompatible over time
- Consequences
- Remember that ND isn't the same as atheism
- That said, it's hard to split the two given our understanding of the existence of Adam, as well as the problem of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness
- When arguing, we shouldn't conflate the two (mix them up)
- Social Darwinism
- Means anywhere from describing the way society evolves in terms of natural selection, to promoting the idea of eugenics in hopes of creating the Uebermensch
- Moral relativism/situational ethics
- There's no real meaning except the survival of our species. Hence, there are no real moral obligations, except perhaps what one chooses for oneself.
- Hinduism
- Ultimate Reality
- All is One, and One is Brahman
- World
- Maya, Illusion, Truth is hidden, not lost
- Man
- Closer to "liberation" than animals, plants
- Karma affects a soul's future life
- Caste
- Even some Christians in India follow caste orders
- Close
- One's view of reality affects all other aspects of life
(knowledge, ethics).
- Ideas