Zen and the art of hylomorphism…

I just finished watching Erleuchtung Garantiert (EG) (Enlightenment Guaranteed), a 1999 film by Dorris Dörrie, recently best known for her 2008 film, Die Kirschblüten – Hanami. I was struck by a quotation from a book on Zen featured in the film.
Let me first give a brief synopsis of EG. It charts the spiritual growth of [...]

If…, then…?

If Heaven is just an illusory way to assuage the fear of mortality, then is the assertion of nonexistence upon death a way to assuage the fear of eternal retribution?
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If euthanasia is so good, why do we try talking people down from suicide?
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If scientific theories do not simply “fall out” from [...]

Careful with that razor!

It is not an uncommon argument against teleology that the appearance of design and finalized function is but a cognitive illusion generated by our brains for survival value. The first thing that strikes me about this claim is how seriously it complicates the attendant claim that our cognitive capacities are merely and wholly evolved by [...]

Pressure…in a vacuum?

I am greatly intrigued by the concept of natural selection (NS). In this post I would like to consider three aspects of the theory which I think place it in a proper metaphysical setting and, as a consequence, complicate the appearance of its scientific hegemony.
My first claim concerns the logical vs. empirical status of NS. [...]

Natural selection doesn’t mean truth-selection…

“Biologists discover the evolutionary roots of religion!”
“Biologists discover the evolutionary roots of food!”
In the second case, we uncontroversially see that food meets a need integral to vital human nature. In the first case, we see a similar instance of integral satisfaction. If God is an illusion generated by natural selection, then so is caloric consumption. [...]

Quick notes on mind, brain, will, action, etc.

As John Broughton’s surveys show, physicalism and dual-aspect theory of mind are as naively intuitive (i.e., in the child psyche) as dualism. Cf. Rieber, Body and Mind, pp. 188ff.
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One man, call him Johann, stands before another man, call him Gunther. Johann shouts repeatedly at Gunther’s legs, “Walk now! Go on, move! Walk forward!” [...]