In this episode we begin a series of recaps and discussions of the issues brought up by individual lecturers at the Society of Catholic Scientists conference on June 9 and 10. We start with Ed Feser's keynote, "The Immateriality of the Mind."
Feser's objective was to highlight how our ability to be rational, and in particular for our thoughts to mean something unambiguous - even in the face of our inability to express ourselves in a completely unambiguous way in our spoken or written words - makes it difficult to maintain a purely materialist / physicalist view of human minds and therefore of the universe they inhabit.
At the outset he noted that rationality tends to occupy less attention in philosophy of mind and matter than two other properties, consciousness and intentionality, which seem widely taken as more difficult to explain by our contemporaries. For ancient and medieval philosophers, however, rationality was probably the clearest indication that the human mind is not some sort of solely physical mechanism.
Feser presents an argument via James Ross (Thought and the World) to try to bring this older consensus into the mainstream. It can be presented thus:
We discuss Feser's points and a few of our own in favor of the two premises: our inability to be sure of the content of arithmetical symbols used outside our own range of experience, the ambiguity of translating ancient languages like Linear A, and the absurdity of believing I can't ultimately know what I'm thinking about.
Ep 147 - Daniel Shields on Nature and Nature’s God
Ep 146 - TSSM Takes a Break
Ep 145 - Faith Journeys That Make a World of Difference: Paul Seungoh Chung
Ep 144 - Matthew & Chantal of 5th Place on Emotional Fitness
Ep 143 - Scott Gazzoli and Spirit over Show
Ep 142 - Matt Swaim: Symbols and Substance, in Faith and Online
Ep 141 - Louis Albarran and the Faith of Real People
Bonus - Society of Catholic Scientists 2022
Ep 140 - Chris Bell – Views from a Pro-Life Lifetime
Ep 139 - Pondering Big Issues Powered by Uranium
Ep 138 - Darcia Narvaez, Insights About Humanity for a Suffering World
Ep 137 - Francis Bacon and the New Organon
Ep 136 - Deacon Harold: Life Rich in Reality, Reality Rich in Life
Ep 135 - A Visit to the Universe of Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ
Ep 134 - Bill on Journalism and Truth with Franciscan Dave
Cybersecurity Bonus Episode with Matthew Cloud
Episode 133 - Cybersecurity Education as a Vocation with Matthew Cloud
Ep 132 – The Long Road to Mathematical Physics
Ep 131 - Jordan Wales and the Moral Theology of AI
Episode 130 - Natasha Toghramadjian’s Research into Earth-Shaking Impacts
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