The Philosophy of Realism

The Philosophy of Realism w/ Dr. @realbriankemple https://t.co/IhyVph7blX via @YouTube

— Patrick Flynn (@PatFlynnCOS) July 13, 2021

Epistemology with Dr. Timothy Noone

I was listening to an Extraenvironmentalist interview with John Michael Greer, and it struck me that his epistemology is subjective, not quite Kantian but related. Still, that doesn't necessarily vitiate what he has to say about economics and our failure to consider the primary economy.

Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing


The speaker's homepage.

You claim that definitions can only be relative and subjective

But how could this be the case unless you knew you were talking about the same thing?

The "first impressions" of a person are actually the sensory data (along with the corresponding judgments) we use to form an initial judgment of someone. Is this sensory data chosen or merely received? I think in many cases we choose the data, especially when we are trying to evaluate someone's character. We look for signs of certain personal qualities, or the lack of these qualities. Sometimes this selectivity can be exclusive to the point that we miss other signs, or we judge prematurely. Hence the need for other moral virtues to aid us in making good judgments about character.

Judging well

Does the act of judgment have a habit or virtue? It is apparent that there is a difference between judging and judging well. Is judging well solely due to the accumulation of experience? For example, judging how fast the cars in front of us are going--some seem to never learn to make the judgment before making a lane change. The act of judgment is dependent upon our moral state -- those who are patient enough to accumulate sufficient sense data before judging are better able to do so than those who are not.

How is the habit of nous or intellectus related to simple apprehension and judgment? I used to think that intellectus was related to simple apprehension only, but now I am wavering on this point. But I do not see how our judging well is due to anything but experience and having the requisite moral habits.

Logic and Mental Philosophy
Principles of Logic
The Mansions of Thomistic Philosophy
Classical man and the Traditional Ethic
Joseph Sikora, S.J. article

Where has Joseph Magee gone? Elementary Aristotelian-Thomistic Logic is still incomplete.


(This post reminds me of the account of human knowledge given by virtue epistemologists like Linda Zagzebski.)

OUP (Google Books)
Ernest Sosa's A Virtue Epistemology
Heather Battal, What is Virtue Epistemology

Misc: The Lonergan Institute

Archbishop Bruno Forte on Theology

From Part 2 of his interview by Zenit. (Part 1)

How will we respond today to the developments of theology, but also of modern epistemology? I would answer by referring to the great 20th century philosophical and theological conquest, which is the powerful rediscovery of hermeneutics, that is, of the science of interpretation. When many years ago, as dean of the faculty of theology in Naples, I invited Hans Georg Gadamer, the father of contemporary hermeneutics, author of "Truth and Method," to a quaestio quodlibetalis. A first year [student] asked him this question: "What is hermeneutics?" To which Gadamer, without being ruffled, said, after a moment of reflection: "Hermeneutics means that when you and I speak we make an effort to reach the vital world that is behind the other's words, and from which they proceed."

Therefore, epistemology illumined by hermeneutics means not only to understand what is immediately perceptible, the visible, the phenomenalistic, the rational, but to also understand, or at least to try to reach, those vital worlds from which these expressions stem. In this context, one discovers that science is not only that of phenomena, but that there is an ensemble of sciences, which are the sciences of the spirit, which make an effort to reach what is not said, what cannot be said, what cannot be wholly divided into parts, but which is the vital world in which human processes, historical processes, etc. are situated. And there is a further level that points to that experience of the mystery of life and of the world and that all of us have and which cannot be referred to a mere linguistic or rational formula, that is, an excess of the Mystery that surrounds the world, that surrounds the life of each one of us and that we continually perceive with surprise, with wonder, which we can reflect in words only up to a certain point.

However, a science that takes wonder seriously in face of this Mystery, the possibility that the latter be said without betraying oneself, that is, the possibility of Revelation, and that one make it the subject of one's thought, becomes an absolutely precious science. In a similar hermeneutical dimension, interpretative of reality -- which does not stop at the immediate but always seeks the ultimate, the profound connections -- it seems to me that theology is presented with full dignity as a science of which man is in need to live and to die, as he needs God and the meaning of life to live and to die.

Is theology that takes the modern subjective turn seriously doomed to failure? Is a realist theology better suited to the task? If we are confined by our words, and words are not signs of reality but only of our thoughts, then how can we attain the real? I do not think Gadamer is a (naive) realist, but what sort of understanding of the relationship between language and reality does he offer to replace realism?