Thursday, December 08, 2016

Links of Note, Notably Linked

* Gregory Stackpole had a nice passage from St. Gregory the Great on the ends of power, with some discussion.

* Elisa Freschi, Analytical Philosophy of Religion with Indian Categories, makes an interesting point here:

“God” is an ambiguous term, in fact so ambiguous that I wonder why does not each study about philosophy of religion start with a discussion of what the author means by this word. I pragmatically distinguish (for instance, in my teaching) between god as devatā ‘deity’ (a superhuman being which is better than a human one, but only insofar as s/he has the same qualities of a human being in higher degree, like the Greek and Roman deities of mythology), god as īśvara ‘Lord’ (the omniscient and omnipotent being of rational theology), god as brahman ‘impersonal being’ (the impersonal Absolute of most monisms, including Bradley’s one discussed by Guido Bonino) and god as bhagavat ‘personal God’ (the personal God one directly relates to in prayers, without necessarily caring for His/Her omnipotence or omniscience, but rather focusing on Him/Her as spouse, parent, child, etc.). Within this classification, Analytical Philosophy of Religion appears to focus on the īśvara aspect of God.

* G. B. Sadler, How Hard Is It to Find an Aristotelian Friend?

* Elliott Roland on essentially ordered causal series

* Don't forget Whewell's Gazette: Year 3, Vol #16 and the many good links that ThonyC has drawn together on the history of science.

* Some discussions of the election, in no particular order:

John Michael Greer, When the Shouting Stops

TheOFloinn, It's Never as Bad as Some People Think

Malak Chabkoun, Spoiled Americans Now Want to Flee What They Created

Patrick Clark, Truth, Hegemony, and Our Need for Exemplars

John Cleese's reaction to the American election is excellently Cleesey, whatever your political inclinations.

* Sara L. Uckelmann continues her excellent discussion of the logical principle ex impossibili sequitur quodlibet in the thirteenth century: Part 1, Part 2

* I had intended to post this a while ago but never did: Nahuatl hymns for All Saints Day; Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs.

* Zachary Braiterman notes some problems with the notion that a doctrine of natural law can be found in rabbinical sources.

* Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Intellectual Yet Idiot

* An important reexamination of the famous Milgram experiment, noting its many flaws

* It's a mark of something that Bre Payton has to explain what the song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside", is really about. I was glad to see her bring in the Armstrong and Middleton version, which is hilarious.

* Jessica Leech has a very good interview on modality at "3am"

* Pauline Kaurin on the Melian Dialogue

* David Dyzenhaus on salus populi suprema lex