robkoons

@mark_bauerlein @alexpriou It’s very hard to be a right-winger in academia without eventually going “native”. Hard, but not impossible

@alexpriou 35 years ago, in the political correctness debate, conservatives won over the public (Bloom, D'Souza, Kimball were best-sellers) and some thought PC would retreat in academe. It didn't, not in the humanities, where, despite the many well-known humiliations, it's as tough as ever.

The crux of Corey's argument is the following fiction: "But these extremists are a vanishing minority among the huge numbers employed at American universities." It's simply false. All data on party affiliation, viewpoints, and campaign contributions show the academy to be increasingly left-leaning and increasingly supportive of the Democrats' more and more radical agenda. Even worse, though: "I’ve also learned, from talking with students, that they care about seeing people like themselves in positions of authority, especially as teachers and mentors." So what? Since when did this count as part of a serious education? And does it apply to authors, too? Should we DEI the curriculum simply because students "care about [reading] people like themselves"? I didn't realize warmth and fuzziness were the ends of education… But the rub, in terms of practice, comes here: "the problem with annihilating DEI is that you can’t eliminate the people who supported it. They’re all still here" Why can't you? Seirously. I've seen patently illegal behavior—race-based hiring, race-based everything. These people are awful, expensive, and frankly unnecessary. Rufo's tactics and objectives should be expanded, not retracted out of cowardice to call one's "colleagues" what they are. And the article as a whole? Nothing about an actual middle position. She would just roll us back a few years, and the ideological train would continue back in the other direction, as the complacent of the past return again to their warm complacency. Sorry, but this isn't based in the reality of the situation. wsj.com/opinion/free-e…

@2Philosophical_ Kinda late for April Fool’s

I’m often critical of Nietzsche on here. I will say, though: something I admire greatly about him is that he was, in the end, a very pious Christian who affirmed the equal dignity of all and wanted nothing more than for all of us to love one another. Careful reading reveals this.

A philosopher offers a friendly review of Douthat’s book — which, unlike Current Affairs, people should definitely read: open.substack.com/pub/jpandrew/p…

@michaeljknowles Luther accepted the perpetual virginity of Mary.

When it comes to the perpetual virginity of Mary, do you agree with the Catholic view or with the view of Protestant reformers Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Wesley?

1/2 Two new open access articles on hylomorphism and quantum physics from physicist and philosopher William M. R. Simpson. The first is "Don’t Squint: Quantum Hylomorphism Can Solve Albert’s Macro-Object Problem," in Topoi: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

@2Philosophical_ Parfit, yes. Not so sure about Rawls.

Counterpoint: Philosophers will continue to care about Rawls and Parfit as long as there are philosophers.

@ELuttwak It means to reduce to one-tenth, I.e., to kill 90%

Dept of War needs to prohibit the use of "decimate" unless to describe the killing/destruction of only 10% of the targeted enemy (decem= 10). Of course it would be much better if Latin were obbligatory at West Point & Greek at Annapolis to upgrade inter-service rivalries.

@ProtPhilosopher It’s only as a prohibition that it’s self-undermining

@ProtPhilosopher You’re confusing the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture (which Catholics also accept) with SS. SS does not follow logically from the fact of Scriptural authority. It is a universal negative claim that needs some rationale.

Demanding that sola scriptura be "taught in Scripture" is a category error. It's demanding that a constitutive rule be an instance of the activity it constitutes.

@JLSteffaniak @ProtPhilosopher Protestants use SS to tell us that we not treat the Magisterium as authoritative precisely because it is not Scripture

@robkoons @ProtPhilosopher SS doesn't entail this. Why would it?

@ProtPhilosopher Every norm must have its source in some authority. How is the SS norm authorized to require me to treat Tradition and the Magisterium as non-authoritative?

@robkoons No "non-constitutive authority" category is needed. SS isn't an authority. It's a constitutive norm that identifies where authority is and how it's properly received.

@ProtPhilosopher So, SS lacks “constitutive normative authority”? It must have “non-constitutive authority”, whatever that is.

As you likely know, we only get a "pragmatic inconsistency" if the act of asserting the claim is in real conflict with the content of the claim. But, the way you're characterizing SS is a caricature. If the content of SS were something like "no one may make non-scriptural assertions," we'd get the pragmatic inconsistency. Defending the norm would conflict with the content. But the content of SS is more like "Scripture alone possesses constitutive normative authority for doctrinal belief." Making a philosophical argument for SS isn't itself a doctrinal claim demanding assent of faith. It's a claim about the nature of doctrinal authority. As such, there's no pragmatic inconsistency.

@romanhelmetguy @JeremyTate41 I’d say just math and languages (starting with classical languages). They can learn history on their own.

Ok here’s my proposal: If someone gave me the money to start a university there, every undergrad would learn the exact same thing: History & Math. One track for everyone. No electives. Why? Because if you know enough history and you know enough math, understanding anything else becomes trivial. And by teaching just a single track, this could be done for dirt cheap. For history, the first year should just be reading 50k pages written during the Ancient period, second year 50k pages from the Medieval period, third year 50k pages from the Early Modern period, and fourth year 50k pages from the Modern period. Professors would give daily lectures to structure and synthesize the day’s readings. In the course of this history instruction, students would ofc read the theological, philosophical, and ideological works that drove much of history. And they would debate these ideas to learn rhetoric and become skillful writers and speakers. For math, the standard math major is already somewhat decent, but there would be just one rigorous track for everyone: an intense course load that covers both theoretical and applied, and with enough probability and information theory etc to understand AI. In the course of instruction, practical applications to engineering, physics, coding etc would be taught alongside. Anybody who went through that curriculum would be perfectly positioned to understand anything. All hard sciences are downstream of math, and all social sciences are downstream of history. With all the advances in the past 500 years, consider this my proposal for a modern trivium: a base layer of knowledge that any truly learned person must be expected to master, before going on to specialize in a specific field. And the benefit of running a university this way is that it’s very cheap. Theoretically you could do it with just 2 professors: one for history, one for math. They could each teach 4 courses: each year’s course in a 2 hour block every day. History Year 1-4, and Math Year 1-4. Also, every upper year student is qualified to TA every lower year class. And of course, if we had the money, we could hire more professors to teach these 8 courses to reduce the workload. 4 professors teaching 2 courses each would be a nice balance. A typical student’s day could be for example: a 2 hour block for History instruction, a 2 hour block for Math instruction, and the rest of the day for studying. If you enrolled just 100 students a year and they each paid just $25k for tuition and board, that’s $2.5M a year to pay just 2-4 professors and maintain the handful of buildings needed. And if we taught 100 smart students a year this way, I’m convinced they’d conquer the world. There are approximately zero people alive today who have the comprehensive knowledge of history needed to master the humanities AND the comprehensive knowledge of math needed to master STEM. They would be in a league of their own.

@analyticatheism @RealAtheology So kind of you!

Happy Birthday to one of the greatest natural theologians since Swinburne, Dr. Rob Koons (@robkoons). One of the few remaining theists whose works keep me up at night as an Atheist and Naturalist. A selection of some my favorite works below:

@FeserEdward Very sad, and inexcusable.

An update on what happened, to counter various unwarranted speculations I’ve seen here and elsewhere. My understanding from official sources is that my social media activity was judged to be controversial, and in particular that the archbishop had received complaints from some who had concerns about my having been critical of Pope Francis. No specific views or remarks of mine were cited. My understanding from other credible sources is that the complaints came, specifically, from a number of older priests in the L.A. area who had seen an announcement about the talk that had been sent to parishes. (This makes sense given that the talk was cancelled very soon after it was announced – within a day or so – and the print and online announcements were highly unlikely to have been seen before that time by many except people with some connection to or special interest in the seminary.) That is all I am able to say at this time.

@Philip_Goff That’s a pleonasm!

How dare you...I'm a heretical Anglican!!!!

Can the President enforce voter ID for voting? Article IV, section 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” You can’t have a republic without manifestly secure elections.

@jeffkoperski @SimonSimplicio Albertus Magnus contributed more to the SR than Descartes. Cartesian’s universally rejected Newton’s gravity as an “occult quality”.

@jeffkoperski @SimonSimplicio AT validated the empirical approach that made the Scientific Revolution possible. If the mere absence of Aristotle were sufficient, why did the SR occur in the most thoroughly Aristotelianized region/epoch in history?

This is what happens when an overconfident 20 year old Thomoid reads one Ed Feser book. It's the philosophical equivalent of a newly licensed counselor attending one psychodynamic webinar and thinking the entire behavioral tradition is wrong