In J. M. Coetzee’s strange and fascinating novel The Childhood of Jesus, the precocious child David has a difficult time understanding numbers. Oh, he knows their names but is not inclined to put them in the order that the rules of mathematics specify. Nor is he inclined to accept the rules guiding any accepted human behavior—he wants to live in a world in which things are valuable and right to the extent that he likes them, and he is not... Read more
The theme of a philosophy conference that I attended a couple of years ago was “Hope in Exile.” I don’t remember many of the details of the conference, nor do I recall the content of any of the papers that were read. But the title of the conference has stayed with me, because I do not believe that hope has been a scarcer commodity at any time during my adult years than it is right now. In Autumn, acclaimed Scottish... Read more
Exactly three years ago, on the morning of Super Bowl 49, I wrote a blog post connecting the emerging “Deflategate” scandal involving the New England Patriots, who would win their fourth Super Bowl that evening, to various issues arising in a course I was teaching called “Grace, Truth, and Freedom in the Nazi Era.” Three days from now, my beloved Patriots will compete for their sixth Super Bowl victory (SB 52) as they defend their fifth championship earned last year... Read more
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. He was one of the most important and recognizable public figures in the English-speaking world during the first half of the twentieth century. He was also an avowed atheist. The story is told that at the end of one of his public lectures in which his atheism was on full display, a furious woman stood up during the question and answer period and... Read more
A few weeks ago, Jeanne said “I want a fish.” This was a rather random request, but Jeanne very seldom asks for anything, so within a few days we went to the pet store and purchased a Betta fish. Jeanne named him “Ezekiel” (more randomness), and he has been on the counter between our kitchen and dining room ever since. Google “Care of Betta fish” and you’ll get all sorts of conflicting advice concerning how often and what to feed... Read more
Fifteen or more years ago my professional writing and research interests were largely focused on the philosophical implications of various interesting and important issues in the sciences, particularly the theory of natural selection in biology and philosophy’s contributions to cognitive science (an interdisciplinary investigation of consciousness and the brain involving biology, neuroscience, physics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and several other disciplines). For a number of reasons my professional research and writing energies have shifted over the years, but I still have... Read more
So moral relativism makes us more corrupt, but it also keeps us open-minded; moral objectivism keeps us on the straight and narrow, but it also breeds intolerance. Is one of these outcomes clearly better than the other? Daniel Engber, Slate.com Do moral absolutes exist? Is human engagement with moral principles more like a treasure hunt, where we search for something that is already there but perhaps deeply hidden, or are moral principles something that we creatively construct from various pieces... Read more
I currently am working my way slowly through Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography of Leonardo da Vinci. One of the many fascinating things about Leonardo is that he does not fit the model of a solitary and tortured genius. So far, at least (I’ve got him up to his middle thirties), Leonardo appears to have been an extroverted “people person” who loved bouncing ideas off other creative people, the sorts of folks he surrounded himself with in his studio and travelling... Read more
Anyone who reads this blog regularly or even occasionally knows that I love movies. Solidly in my top ten, maybe even in the top five, is the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.” About half way through the story, Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) and Terrence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) are in the bowels of my beloved Fenway Park. Ray has brought Terry there in an attempt to involve him in a ludicrous scheme that Mann is trying... Read more
My father was a Baptist minister who was a voracious and eclectic reader. Often his reading took him to places that, at least in his day, conservative Protestant preachers should not go, places that ended up influencing his sermons in ways that would occasionally get him in trouble. One of these places was the work of Carl Jung, where Dad encountered a concept that became more and more important to his understanding of what God is and how God works... Read more
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