I've fallen behind in my philosophical posts the last week or two. I have several halfway finished and will be posting them (hopefully) over the next few days. I really want to get into a discussion of Peirce and common-sensism. Enwe of Enwe's Metablog also raised the interesting question of what grounds logic. I'd really like to do a brief discussion of how Peirce deals with this question as well as a rather different approach from Heidegger. Finally I really need to finish the next chapter of Blake's book on free will and Mormon theology. I've been promising that since Christmas. In the meantime I was looking back through a few of my previous philosophically oriented posts of the last six months. I thought I'd link to a few of my favorites. I've certainly increased in readership the last six months so some of you may have missed these.
Gadamer vs. Derrida: Derrida gets a bum rap when it comes to philosophy, mainly due to his taking his earlier studies seriously and writing in terms of them. This leads to a demonstrative approach to criticizing others arguments. Unfortunately this means that if you aren't already familiar with his earlier, more straightforward works, he may come off as merely arguing via "nonsense." You can see this in his response to Searle and speech act theory in Limited Inc. I think you can also see this in the famous Gadamer - Derrida debate over communication. This post tries to go through what is at stake in that debate and briefly explain what Derrida is getting at.
Derrida, Peirce, Eco: The big issue in both semiotics and philosophy, as I see it, is the nature of the icon. (Roughly representation by similarity) It is on this matter that Derrida appeals to Peirce in On Grammatology. It is also, I think, the key point in Derrida's own philosophy (and by extension leads to why he conducts philosophy the way he does in the 80's and 90's). However I don't think Peirce really follows Derrida on this point. This is a brief discussion of where the conflict is. I should note that I still haven't decided who is right. (Mainly due to not having time yet to go back and carefully examine the logic of it all)
Shape of Agency: This one is a little more odd and definitely much more within the theological vein of this blog. It's an extended analysis and meditation on the geometric symbolism within notions of agency and existence in LDS theology. It's fairly far ranging, ending in a somewhat technical discussion of Heidegger.
Davidson, Peirce and Mind This is one I really ought to go back and tidy up and streamline. It's basically a comparison of Peirce's notion of mind and Davidson's anomalous monism. I come to the conclusion that they either share the same position or at least very similar positions. It's a tad wordy since I was working though the issues as I wrote it. To me this is the ideal use of a blog though. It is blogging as a method of understanding. A kind of dialog of discovery. (Something else I really ought to write up from a Peircean perspective as he has a lot to say about dialog and discovery) I've noticed a few people getting burnt out on blogs because they either feel they aren't professional enough or they feel obliged to write for others. I personally think blogs are instead most valuable to help one clarify thoughts and develop ideas. So to me, whether anyone else likes it or not, this is one of my favorite posts.
Feel free to check out my archive. Unfortunately they aren't organized by theme. Some are extended arguments or analysis while others are primarily links to other sites with brief commentary.
This is just a test to see if my modifications to the comments code works. It's designed to prevent the spamming of last week.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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Blogged by Clark Goble