My lack of blog entries lately is not due to lack of desire or effort; only a lack of time. Projects and request always seem to stack up all at once. That said, I do have some exciting things coming up soon and others on the horizon. First, I am nearing completion on a short …
Some notes on animal cognition
Aquinas—unlike some others of his time, before his time, and even after his time—did not always underestimate the potency of non-human animals’ estimative capacity by reducing it to “instinct”: that is, to an inborn, unchanging, “pre-programmed” routine of how to deal with environmental factors. As we know now, in an endeavor accelerated by the investigative …
Scholastic Retrieve [2] – Philosophical Science: Necessity of Logic
Mention “logic” around the typical university today and you are likely to educe a variety of thoughts in your audience: perhaps something having to do with computer programming: loops, if, else, then statements, and so on; perhaps something to do with “postgenderist” ideology railing against the “illogic” of the political “right-wing”; maybe a very dry …
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Thoughts on Being Human [4] – Cognitive Faculties
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 …
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What is Nominalism?
And why is it such a problem? One of the most serious and extensive controversies of the Latin Age of philosophy was that of universals. The Greek philosophy of antiquity, and its transmission into the Latin Age by Boethius and through the Islamic tradition, had long discussed the question of whether the way in which …