conceptualism

A collection of 23 posts

abstracts

What does 'exist' even mean?

"Exist" can be a tricky word. Unless I define the term upfront, people often think I mean something other than I do. When I am talking about the color red, or, the concept of loyalty or morality, I might say that these things don't exist. What

conceptual nominalism

Responding to Breuer on Conceptual Nominalism

Luke Breuer kindly responded to my request and provided a critique of my position of conceptual nominalism recently. I hope to look at his claims and analyse them in my reply here today. I have a forthcoming book that sets out my position with a lot more depth and clarity

conceptual nominalism

Luke Breuer Takes on Conceptual Nominalism

I have a long history in my writing and philosophy here and elsewhere of adhering to a position called "conceptual nominalism". If you want more details, check out: * Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #2 - Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism * The Pertinence of Nominalism to Religious and Philosophical Debates

conceptual nominalism

Arguing about Naturalism with a Commenter

I am going to challenge the comment of Person223 that he placed on another thread about naturalism. I thank him for at least giving something approaching a substantial claim, something that many detractors over the last few days have singularly failed to do: A chair is a chair. Not everything

conceptual nominalism

Sean Carroll on His Poetic Naturalism

I previously introduced you to Sean Carroll's Poetic Naturalism, which I see as a naturalistic worldview entailing conceptual nominalism. Here are a few videos to explain his position: Poetic naturalism: The meaning of life: Purpose: Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher on Facebook: A Tippling Philosopher You

conceptual nominalism

Poetic Naturalism

I am a big fan of Sean Carroll for a whole host of reasons, but recently because of his book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (UK), which, if you know my philosophical positions on big ideas and my endless deference to conceptual

Aquinas

Criticising the Idea of Potential and Actuality in Natural Law Philosophy

As some of you may know, I am presently editing a book by Gunther Laird calls The Unnecessary Science. Natural Law philosophy, about which I have talked a great deal recently, owes an awful lot to Aristotle, Aquinas and other thinkers from a bygone era. One of the cornerstones of

conceptualism

Hsiao’s Perverted Faculty Argument: Doesn’t Even Get off the Ground

The Perverted Faculty Argument (PFA) is a strand of Thomistic (Thomas Aquinas) thinking that is intertwined with Natural Law Theory (NLT)  of which I have been blogging lately. I was challenged by Vincent Torley recently to, if I was going to attack the PFA (as I have done here and

conceptual nominalism

The Second Amendment and Rights

A thread has recently exploded when I posted about the Second Amendment and drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable weaponry. On the thread, one particularly obvious common denominator sprung up with all of the gun advocates, the idea of "rights": A right is no less a right

abstracts

Making Moral Claims Without Doing the Groundwork

This post was recently posted on Facebook by someone I know and I was added to the link. I want to deal with this here because it is not only something this other person does all the time, but it is a really common occurrence when arguing about morality and

abstracts

Aquinas' Essence and Existence Argument: A Critique

Aquinas is famous for a number of arguments for God's existence, one such one being the argument from essence and existence from De Ente et Essentia [On Being and Essence]. I will briefly summarise it here. Everything supposedly has both essence and existence and they are two separate

Buddhism

Buddhism and the (No-)Self

As I have expressed many times before on this blog, I am a conceptual nominalist. This means that I deny the ontic existence of abstract ideas – they exist only in the minds of conceivers. Of course, one of the great abstract ideas is the self. Personal identity is a fascinating

abstracts

Aquinas, Distinction, Composition and Divine Simplicity

In continuing to comment on the idea of divine simplicity, as it pertains to the Trinitarian God of Christianity, I am going to move on to speak about Aquinas. Setting the Scene Commenter (and contributor) here at ATP Ficino asked: Jonathan, I would very much appreciate it if you can

Aristotle

Aristotelian Realism and Saving Theology

I recently posted about abstract objects and things that are called universals, writing about how I think the whole area is thoroughly problematic for metaphysics and thus theology. I won't go through it all again - you can read more here - but I will redefine universals. There

conceptualism

Species Do Not "Exist": Evolution, Sand Dunes and the Sorites Paradox

I am going to explain to you why species do not exist and in some sense there is no such thing as speciation in evolutionary biology. This will involve philosophy, sand dunes, voting, colours and fossils. Amongst other things. The Sorites Paradox My favourite philosophical thought experiment, if you can

conceptualism

Quote of the Day: NathairNimheil on Abortion and Personhood

In a rapidly expanding comment thread on SJWs and the regressive left, a debate with a religious type has developed concerning abortion. Here is a great comment by NathairNimheil: Like you holding an *arbitrary* position of what constitutes “personhood”. So my definition of personhood, which you have never even heard,

conceptualism

The Kalam Cosmological Argument and William Lane Craig #2 (revisited)

I am soon to release a book on the Kalam Cosmological Argument which has been long in the pipeline, but is finally ready, short of a foreword. As a result of its imminent creation (er, out of something!), let me remind you of an old couple of posts that deal

conceptual nominalism

Immigration: what's all the fuss? My thoughts... (part 1)

With the rise and rise of UKIP, even despite their consistent foot-in-mouth propensity (and perhaps because of it), I have written a piece looking at UKIP in a skeptical light and am now due to write about the subject which concerns them the most. Immigration. This is quite a useful thing to do beca

abstracts

The "I", personhood and abstract objects

I have talked about abstract objects many times before, such as here. It is a fundamental area to almost everything in philosophy and is not debated nearly enough. We had a Tippling Philosophers' debate in the pub last night about the 'I' and personhood, which came down to whether they really existe

abstracts

Philosophy fundamentals - abstracts and abstract ideas

This subject is fundamental to much of philosophy. It underpins disciplines like moral philosophy, and so it provides the ontology of the building bricks of our reality. This video explains abstracts and why they are so vital: http://youtu.be/E8geWQmte0A

conceptualism

On Beauty

We had a Tippling Philosophers night the other night on beauty, and these are the quick notes I sent to someone who was unable to be there. Let me know what you think: My belief is that: Beauty is a word which all too often means "I like that".

conceptualism

Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #2 - Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism

So having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is – Philosophy 10

conceptualism

The Kalam Cosmological Argument and William Lane Craig #2

Having looked at the issue of causality in the last post, I would like to continue to analyse the first premise in the KCA. This objection is connected to the last objection in its implications on the KCA. To remind people of the KCA: 1) The universe that begins to