Sunday, July 16, 2023

Links of Note

 * Benjamin S. Yost, Kant's Demonstration of Free Will, or How to Do Things with Concepts (PDF)

* Alexander T. Englert, Kant's Favorite Argument for Our Immortality: The Teleological Argument (PDF)

* Michael Hatcher, Do we need an account of prayer to address the problem of praying without ceasing? (PDF). A fascinating discussion. Strategy 3 is, I think, the obviously correct strategy; we are to pray without ceasing as a Church. The imperative is a plural imperative to a church in a public letter that would have been expected to be shared around as public letters generally were. The problems Hatcher identifies for the strategy are not, I think, actual problems; a generic plural imperative to a group naturally implicates that the group is to obey the imperative but that each individual and subgroup has a responsibility to contribute to its doing so, or aid others in contributing to its doing so, as they reasonably can. Thus there is no need to specify individuals or groups. 

* Michelle La Rosa discusses the No Interest Loan Scheme, operated by the Good Shepherd Sisters of Australia, at "The Pillar"

* Carlos Steel, Why should we prefer Plato's Timaeus to Aristotle's Physics? Proclus' critique of Aristotle's explanation of the physical world (PDF)

* David Fisher discusses Aphrahat the Persian Sage, at "Catholic 365"

* Huw Williams, Remember Richard Price!, at "Aeon.co"

* David Glick, The Principle of Least Action and Teleological Explanation in Physics (PDF)

* Kurt Gray, Will Blakey, Nicholas DiMaggio, It's not only political conservatives who worry about moral purity, at "Psyche.co". The thesis that they weren't was obvious to anyone who actually ever considered the arguments given by non-conservative; the opposite view seems to have arisen from taking some very limited studies on some limited issues as if they were general representations of the entire spectrum of politics, combined with (and perhaps due to) a lack of basic common sense. In any case, despite the title, the article is less about conservatives vs. liberals than about general shared patterns in how people reason about moral purity.

* Ryan Kulesa, Kantian Conscientious Objection: A Reply to Kennett (PDF). Kennett's argument is indeed odd; nothing can count as a professional duty for Kant unless it is already determined to be universalizable. Thus her whole argument amounts to saying, as Kulesa notes, that you can't have conscientious objection to things you are morally required to do, which is true, but also useless. What is more, Kant's understanding of conscience as most properly an expression of reason means that we should in general respect the attempt of people to recognize the authority of the tribunal of their conscience.