Continuum Philosophical Insight
Philosophical Consulting and Education
What is a habit? Hearing the term, we think of: addictions (cigarettes, heroin, cocaine, masturbation), tendencies (leaning to the left in our chairs, putting one’s head in the right hand when bored, looking inappropriately at people we find attractive), or patterns (coffee in the morning, television in the evening, hygiene before bed). In every habit, …
In the first part of a new on-going series—a project of retrieval which brings Scholasticism to a living import for today—I am going to ask about the relationship between distinction and understanding. This falls into a broader consideration of philosophical method. Because philosophy is a science of “common reason”—i.e., it needs no other instrument than …
Continue reading "Scholastic Retrieve [1] – Philosophical Science: Congruence"
A review of Carrie Jenkins' What Love Is: And What It Could Be (Basic Books: NY. 2017). “Romantic love”, Carrie Jenkins writes near the end of her book, “cannot continue to be something we just stumble into and accept.” This is true, and Jenkins’ book does instigate questioning after the truth of what romantic love is …
When Wilhelm Wundt distinguished the study of psychology from philosophy and biology in the late 19th century, he was filling a void: both philosophical and biological treatments had failed in their treatment of the human psyche and a new approach seemed not only warranted, but necessary. Philosophy had, for the most part, remained in an …
Continue reading "Thoughts on Being Human [4] – Cognitive Faculties"
What are the signs of our times? That is: what signifies our here-and-now moment? Screaming politicians? Angry mobs? Memes? The ubiquity of networked technologies? It is always hard to tell, from within a moment, what signifies the intelligibility of that moment; understanding precisely where we are requires spending time to find points of reference. Every …
Continue reading "Thoughts on Being Human [3] – Signs of Our Times"
In his highly-quotable, rarely understood and seminal work, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan distinguishes early on between what he calls "hot" and "cold" media, which are, respectively "high" and "low" definition. A hot, high-definition medium is low in participation, while the colder and the lower-definition a medium is, the deeper our participation in it must be: that …
Where do we get our “ideas” or “beliefs”? Before answering, it is helpful to define each of those terms—they tend to be terms that we presume ourselves to know but may not really understand. First, “idea”: an idea is a conceptualization of meaning. In other words, it is the means by which we understand the …
Continue reading "Thoughts on Being Human [2] – Sentimental Belief"
One thing lies common to all of us: we are human. We have human bodies, human minds; human feelings, human thoughts, human desires, human beliefs. But aside from these and other such generic commonalities, our experiences differ. The experiences of being a man or being a woman (or being intersex, for that matter, though an …
Continue reading "Thoughts on Being Human [1] – Presumption"
