About

Mormon Metaphysics is a blog primarily covering my interests in science, religion and philosophy.

Originally it was run off about a page and a half of Python code I wrote. It worked surprisingly well and I really liked the look. However it wasn’t quite as flexible as having all the data in a database and was a bear to clean up if spammers got through my barricades. So in early 2008 I switched it over to WordPress.

While many posts are about religion the blog actually tends to reflect whatever I’m studying at the moment. The primary philosopher I tend to focus on is the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce. However I’ve also read a lot in both Continental and Analytic philosophy and probably have an equal number of favorite writers in both traditions.

In the Continental tradition I’ve tended to focus in on the phenomenologists although I read them as embracing a kind of realism which is unlike how they tend to be read in Literature departments in the United States. The philosophers I’ve focused on the most have been Heidegger and Derrida although I’ve studied a fair bit of others.

In the Analytic tradition I’ve enjoyed philosophy of language and philosophy of mind quite a bit. The philosophers I tend to feel most affinity with are Davidson and Quine. While I enjoy Putnam I often find myself disagreeing with his view (which change a lot).

While I have to admit I can at best claim a superficial knowledge, over time I’ve come to see a lot of medieval philosophy as surprisingly relevant. I also have soft spots for Leibniz and Renaissance philosophy. (Even though admittedly the philosophical worth of Renaissance philosophy is dubious)

I also enjoy reading and studying philosophy of science and trying to weave a path between the two extremes of Popper and Kuhn.

Comments

24 Responses to “About”

very interesting web log. I have recently started reading philosophy and have no background in it. So I will be back for more readings. Thank you so much for the link you left me in my web log.

Hey, thanks for the plug in your sideblog. I was looking for some way to contact you and I can’t seem to find any. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on your blog here; anyone who puts stock in Popper and Kuhn must have something going for them, in my book :)

Hi thank you for your interesting blog. I will continue to read it, If you ever stop by Sweden I will buy you ice-cream or similar as a thanks :)

My business partner is actually headed to Sweden for the chocolate show there. So you can say hi to him.

This blog is pretty much turning into a directional tool for other stuff I write. ,

Clark:

Are you a member of the smpt? Do you have any insight on the mp3 files of the recent conference? For some reason I can not access them.

Are they up? If so send me the link and then I’ll fix the permissions.

Note you have to be a SMPT member to access them.

I am an SMPT member, I am able to access the past element articles, and I am able to get to the links for the digital audio. Here is the general link to the conference:

http://www.smpt.org/member_resource/audio.html

And here is an example link to my specific presentation:

http://libertypages.com/smpt/member_resource/podcast/10/Saturday/22-%20Eric%20Nielson-%20Literal%20Spirit%20Birth.mp3

Still nothing….

Hey, Clark. Congrats on this story:

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/Best-chocolate-bean-in-the-world-now-available-in/WCK5glmky0izf6q_6mKqmw.cspx

Thanks Lincoln – lots of press the past couple of weeks. Lots of 12 and in a few cases 16 hour days at work too…

Eric, I’ll check in on that as soon as I get back from Seattle. I’m hoping to get caught up on reading Badiou and Graham Harman’s OOP on the trip.

I’m just in the middle of reading “The Metaphysical Club” and was taken by Menand’s discussion on Pragmatism, especially as he shows Dewey explaining it. I did a web search on the subject and found your blog, to which I will subscribe, if I can. Anyway, I am trained (not fully educated) in a university and am now more fully pursuing my education upon ceasing to be employed by others. I am confused about pragmatism because it sounds so right, based on my experience and what I think I know about natural selection–yet it seems the Marxists like it a lot, or at least their interpretation of it. I am not an ‘ist’ or an ‘ian’ and don’t subscribe to any ‘ism,’ religious or secular, but I reject what I think I know about Marxism. I reject any entity or school of thought that ‘knows what’s best,’ especially for other people. I guess I’m looking for guidance in viewing what is called ‘pragmatism’ (and I know that all words are lies) by Dewey, primarily, in a way that does not conflict with my inner knowledge that there is a power greater than man about which man cannot successfully speak or write (as with The Tao).
Best wishes,
Ron

I’d be a bit cautious in taking Menand on pragmatism. I know Peirceans don’t necessarily think he gets Peirce’s philosophy right. But it is a great book so long as you don’t take it as an analysis of philosophy.

Part of what happened is that the German Idealists had in a way primed things for evolution. Hegel in particular had this sense of development that could easily be reinterpreted in terms of Darwinism. I think that confluence then affected the pragmatists in America. A for the Marxists, I just am a bit too ignorant there to say much. I suspect their connection to Hegel as well as their materialism made some really like Darwin. But others clearly didn’t. (Recall that evolution was largely rejected in the USSR)

With regards to Dewey, recall that a foundational event in his philosophical development was a profound religious experience. My favorite book on Dewey (on whom I’m anything but an expert) is Sleeper’s The Necessity of Pragmatism. A key insight he gave is that Dewey gets his logic from James rather than Peirce and his psychology from Peirce rather than James. It explained a lot of what I liked in Dewey as well a lot I disliked.

Thanks for your response. I will study closely what you have offered here. I got a little too enthusiastic, I feel, especially after having read the concluding sentence in the section on Pragmatism: “Pragmatism explains everything about ideas except why a person would be willing to die for one.”

In any case, this book and all others in the realm of philosophy, necessarily deal primarily, almost exclusively, in abstractions. What I liked about the discussion on pragmatism (itself an abstraction) is the assertion (by Holmes?) that we decide from our biases and usually for practical reasons, then find the abstraction to fit our decisions or actions. Much harm (as is also asserted, at least indirectly in the Menand book) has come from the energetic pursuit of ideas/abstractions. I have as a touchstone this paragraph form Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the under­lying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first within one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.”

Again, thanks for your contribution to my education.

It would be more accurate to say that pragmatism explains everything about ideas except why a person would be willing to be annihilated for one. Some of us don’t think death is necessarily the end.

Actually Peirce’s pragmatism deals quite well with why someone acts as they do with respect to ideas. (Or, as he typically inverts the relationship, how ideas act) Part of the problem is that Peirce’s notion of pragmatism with respect to signs/language as received in linguistics and far too much of semiotics is distorted through the prism of Charles Morris’ pragmatics. Morris converts Peirce’s semiotics into basically a positivism that only really considers psychology. He also converts Peirce’s triadic conception into a dyadic relationship. All of which is very distorting. When you consider not just the meaning of an idea in terms of the ideas in produces in an interpretant but also what it does you end up losing a lot in Morris. So I might say “I love my wife” but for Peirce this also includes in the interpretant all the things I’d do or potentially do, such as dying for her. Those in turn are related to various kinds of habits developed out of sign-processes.

Peirce’s conception ends up being a bit complex and involves a lot of jargon he developed. The SEP on Peirce’s sign theory is well worth reading. Although it doesn’t go into much depth about how signs produce actions. This discussion at the digital Peirce is worth reading as well. Peirce’s conception of energetic interpretant, typically mediated by an emotional interpretant really answers Menand’s question.

It’s only by artificially limiting signs to a kind of intellectual apprehension, so common in positivism and even much of analytic philosophy, that causes the confusion.

Clark, Now I have to go back and read major portions of Menand’s book! But that’s all right–I’ll have some reference points, thanks to you. I invite you to read my article Scientism, Secular Humanism, Hubris.

Announcing a bold new book for Latter-day Saints:

Walking in Darkness at Noonday: The Cunning Plan to Destroy the Agency of Man

You may see the front cover of the book and read a short synopsis at . If the book is of interest to you and you would like to review it, I will happy to have a complimentary copy sent to you.

Best regards,

John C. Greene
137 Hemlock Drive
Deep River, CT 06417

19 Kathleen Hubert on June 22nd, 2011 12:46 am

Hello,

I was wondering if you accept guest post for your blog. If you do, I would like to submit a few. I’m a recent college graduate, with an English major, looking to build out my portfolio. I can write on a wide variety of topics and am sure you would be happy with the quality. Please email me back if you are interested. Thank you for your time.

- Kathleen Hubert
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002374243662

I don’t typically. Honestly I see this blog more as me working through issues rather than something where finished thoughts are published. Blogs are easy to put together now though. Check out WordPress.com.

21 Marie Jensen on August 25th, 2011 11:40 am

Hi there-

Am teaching intro ethics course this fall at predominantly LDS institution and was hoping you could point me to some salient academic articles regarding Mormonism and various ethical (including and especially non-theoretical) thinkers. Would love William James and Mormonism, Thoreau and Mormonism, Aristotle and Mormonism, etc. but geared for sophomores with no background in philosophy (but a hard-headed suspicion that a course in ethics is meant to make them godless, AS OPPOSED to strengthening and elucidating their Mormonism). Thank you. Also if you know of any written profiles of historical Mormons (in the Kierkegaardian, Thoreauvian sense of the individual) it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Marie

I don’t know as much written on formal ethics beyond what you find in SMPT’s journal Element. You might want to check back issues of that or perhaps some of the conference recordings (available to members)

How do I subscribe to your blog? I don’t see subscribe button.

The big orange rss button in the upper right.

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