Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Luther: Grace is justified by Faith alone

By Hanno

I'm reading my friend Dr. Gimbel's book on Einstein's Jewish Science, and in discussing Martin Luther's view of Christianity  he quotes the following from Luther:
Therefore it is clear that, as the soul needs only the word of God for its life and Righteousness, so it is justified by faith alone and not any works; for if it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word, and consequently, it would not need faith.
Gimbel takes that to mean, as is usual, that for Luther, Faith is sufficient for God's Grace.  It is clear Luther means to entail that no works justify Grace.  God's Grace, ("Life and Righteousness") do not come from anything you do, but from faith.  But there is an argument presented here, and I'm not sure it does what Luther wants it to do.

First, lets take a look at the conclusion of the argument:  The soul needs only the word of God for its life and righteousness.  Let me use '->' to symbolize the material conditional. 'Only' reverses the order of the conditional, so as written, the claim is:  R -> W, meaning that the word is a necessary condition for salvation, righteousness, Grace.  If the soul only needs  the word for salvation, the Word is a necessary condition.  If you have life and righteousness, then you must have the Word, since it is only through the Word that you can have life and Righteousness.

It follows, according to Luther, that the soul is justified by faith alone, and not any works.  He gives an argument.  If it could be justified by anything else, it would not need the Word.  This is straightforward:  A -> ~W.  And if it does not need the Word, it does not need Faith:  ~W -> ~F.  But it needs faith.  F.  Therefore, it does not need anything else.  ~A.

So then we have the following premises:

A -> ~W
~W -> ~F

It certainly follows from that second argument


by Modus Tollens, and


By Modus Tollens as well.  If you need Faith, nothing else is sufficient on its own.  So you need the Word, and nothing else.
What does not follow is that Faith or the Word is sufficient for Grace.  It only follows that nothing else is sufficient.  For the Word to be sufficient, he would need

W -> R

to be entailed by the premises, but it is not.  He has defended that Faith is necessary for Grace, but not that it is sufficient.  Why couldn't it be that you have Faith, but still are not give Grace?  Yet that is the conclusion he wants to draw:  it is justified by faith alone.  This simply does not follow from any premise given.  "As the soul needs only the word of God for its life and Righteousness"  does not entail "it is justified by faith alone and not any works."

Monday, January 14, 2013

Mr. Swartz on Xeroxing

by Hanno

I am not sure what I think about the total access to information.  Money somewhere must be made to pay for the resources and the people creating works.  But at the same time, free access to information is good for society, and the people who make many of the products are not the ones who make the money off of it, nor does making a living justify rules that make zillions, or use their power to control the material.

Be that as it may, I have argued for years that calling electronic copying of copyrighted material 'piracy' is absurd and dangerous.  No one is killed.  No one is ransomed.  No property is destroyed.  Law and order is not in jeopardy.  Hackers pick up the name with pride, thinking they are like some modern day Errol Flynn (Look it up, loser) because they copy a file.  But it is a political as well as absurd mistake:  It makes it sound much worse than it is.

A few days ago, a person who pushes the edge of free information to the extreme, killed himself.  I do not believe his legal troubles were the principle cause (many people have far worse legal problems and do not kill themselves) but clearly a contributing factor.  Arron Swartz made copies of academic articles, something the authors of which do not get paid anyway.  Authors such as myself write them because we think we have an idea that is worth reading, not to make money, and because our job security is tied to the publication, not the funds that result.  We were not hurt in anyway by the release of the articles.  But Jstor, a library resource, arguably was.

In any case, here is what he said a while back:

Mr. Swartz outlined his views in the manifesto: “It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”

Amen. As I have long argued, it should be called 'Xeroxing' not pirating.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

'Ghost' and the soul pt.1

by Hanno

     The movie Ghost is still, after all these years, quite popular and well known.  In it, the character played by Patrick Swayze, dies.  His 'ghost' arises from his dead body.  It looks like him, but cannot be seen or heard by anyone else until later in the movie.  His ghost is not a physical object, but some sort of immaterial one.  It is a disembodied 'spirit.'  His hand passes right through his own corpse, and just about everything else.  After learning how to overcome the mind-body problem (you have to concentrate), the ghost learns to manipulate the world around him.  He discovers that there are other ghosts wandering around.  He then uses his ability to manipulate the world to save his lover, and cause, indirectly, the death of the two principle villains.
     When one of the villains dies, the villain's ghost separates from his body, and a whirl of shadowy figures drags the ghost away, screaming and whining, horrified at what is happening to him.  Later, when the principle villain is killed, the same thing happens to his ghost.  Meanwhile, after the final killing, Swayze's lover can see him, and they all see many more ghosts in what appears to be some sort of portal to a better place, presumably heaven.  Now that his task is done, he is free to ascend upward.
     I saw this movie many years ago.  (I'm pretty sure I did not see it when it came out, because I was not married then.  But I did see it on VHS.)  It did not strike me that this was in any way remarkable.  I do remember thinking, well, that is a bizarre way of overcoming the mind-body problem, but that Sawyze looked like his ghost, that his ghost was incorporeal (disembodied), that the bad guy has his soul tormented, and the good guy goes to a better place all struck me as not worth mentioning.
     And yet, this is a testament to just how thorough the Greek concept of the soul is for modern American society. These are not universal features of the human conceptions of the afterlife, but rather given to us by Homer and Plato. Homer gives us souls ("psuche", psyche) that are visible, but disembodied, and dragged down to Hades where bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good ones.  The dragging down in the Iliad and in the Odyssey are much the way the movie presents it.
     For example,  in the Odyssey, Odysseus goes to the underworld (Hades) as part of his quest, and sees the soul (psuche) of his mother.  It looks just like her, just as in the movie.  The soul does not recognize him, and another soul explains that she needs to feed on blood before his mother's psuche will respond.  Odysseus tries to touch her:
Here, Odysseus can see his mother, but she has no substance, no material being.  In a way, it reverses the movie, when Swayze the ghost attempt to touch his corpse, and passes right through (See below).  Sawyze and Odysseus's mother exists as a disembodied 'psuche,' psyche, soul.  She responds to him:
"'My son,' she answered, 'most ill-fated of all mankind, it is not Persephone that is beguiling you, but all people are like this when they are dead.The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together; these perish in the fierceness of consuming fire as soon as life has left the body, and the psuche flits away as though it were a dream."

His mother's fate, being a disembodied psyche, is the fate of all mankind.  The body falls apart, and the psyche flits away as substantial as a dream.   Sometimes that psyche stays on earth until the corpse is properly buried or burned.  But in all cases, among the  Greeks, if there is life after death, it is in this disembodied state.
It is the Greek view which has become so mainstream, that we do not even bat an eye when we see it portrayed in a popular movie.  I do not think it takes much thought to see how unusual the disembodied view is:  if we were not used to it, familiar with it, have it passed down to us, we would see this in the movie and boggle.
      The Greek tradition comes to us from the Christian tradition (although the early Christian tradition held the resurrection to be physical, embodied).  Imagine for a moment, that one was not raised in this tradition, or had any connection to the Greek worldview.  What would you make of it?

[Ghost, by the way, apparently comes from the Germanic word for scary supernatural thing, rather than 'soul' or 'spirit.']

The disembodied psuche.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Action Philosophers! Free Preview Edition

From OpenCulture.com:


Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Do we live in a 3-dimensional world?

From New Scientist:
How do we know we live in three dimensions? In this One Minute Physics episode, animator Henry Reich explores the concept of multiple dimensions and shows one way to test that we live in a 3D world.
The video is part of a series of animations that explains a physics concept in just 1 minute. You can watch the last episode on the sound of hydrogen here.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Russell on Mubarak

From the Grave

"Exactly 41 years ago to the day the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell died. Among the countless works that will continue to bring him posthumous recognition, are his various treatises on human psychology and the one thing he considered the principle driving force in social life - power.

"As Hosni Mubarak addressed the millions of Egyptian people, marching, protesting, bursting with revolutionary fervour intent on seeing him vacate a Presidential seat he's occupied for 30 years, I pondered over what Russell would think of Mubarak, and his address, wherein he promised to step down - eventually. 

"Below are extracts from Russell's articles on political power and the book, "The Conquest of Happiness", offset with extracts of Mubarak's latest speech..."

Read the rest on Al Jazeera Blogs.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Sign of the Times?

by Jerome

Following the trend of news stories announcing philosophy majors disappearing or whole departments closing down, the headline on the Huffington Post this morning says that "Many College Students Failing to Learn Critical Thinking Skills." Yet the article blames students' social habits and lower expectations on the part of educators, making no mention of the absence of logic or critical thinking courses (considered an essential pre-requisite to eduction by medieval thinkers).

Is the problem the fault of individuals or institutions? Or is part of a larger problem, like the commodification of education, or a necessary side effect of the shift of our epistemic medium from a written culture to one that is visual and transitory?

What do you think?

Monday, May 17, 2010

What is a philosopher?

The latest New York Times Opinionator column features Simon Critchley's op-ed, "What Is a Philosopher?"

Kuddos to Professor Critchley for both reflecting on the nature of time, and referencing Monty Python!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Another one bites the dust?


Dear colleagues,




· Dr. Stella Sandford, Director of Programmes, Philosophy


Monday, March 15, 2010

Filmosophy: Star Trek Through Time

By Hanno

The Philosophy Club will host two Filmosophies this year. This is our discussion of film and philosophy, showing some philosophical issues depicted in popular films. The first one we will present, on a day still to be determined, but soon, is on Star Trek, and conceptions of time.

A famous argument about the possibility of time travel rests on the so called "Grandfather's Paradox." It is argued that time travel is impossible. Suppose someone [a] could go back in time, to a time before their father was born. Suppose that either by accident or by choice [though it would be strange choice], the person going back in time kills their own grandfather. Then it is impossible for a to have ever been born, and thus that a went back in time to kill his grandfather. But if time travel is possible, it seems odd to think some power keeps him from killing his own grandfather. The possibility of time travel thus creates the possibility of inconsistent self-reference, like the liars paradox ["I always lie. Even that is a lie."] But that is impossible, so time travel is impossible.

Many works of science fiction present time travel as a real possibility, however. Some movies which do this include Back to the Future, the original Star Trek series, The Terminator, and the new Star Trek movie. All three attempt to deal with the grandfather's paradox in different ways.

In Back to the Future, McFly goes back into time, and alters it. He meets his mother, instead of his father. His mother develops a crush on him, instead of developing a crush on his father. As the movie continues, the effects of this change continue to develop. While looking at a picture, McFly's brother and sister start to disappear. Because the situation is impossible, one horn of the dilemma is physically eliminated. But oddly, this happens slowly, so that the future is half there, half not, like in some quantum state. This, if we stop and think about it, is very odd. If McFly's actions eliminate the future he knew, how could it still be half there? Why would it eliminate the lower half of someone? And how could that affect a picture taken in the future? Some sort of reverse causation would have to be in effect. The absence of something [McFly's brother] would cause an independnent thing [the picture of McFly] to cease to exist. By 'independent, I mean under normal circumstances, the picture can continue to exist even if the object of the picture does not, and vise versa.

The old Star Trek series used time travel serveral times, and each time the Grandfather paradox plays a central role. In one episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever," involves a McCoy who accidentally injects himself with a serum that drives him insane, and jumps into a time travel machine, where he changes history, making the Enterprise immediately disappear. McCoy apparently saves the life of someone who keeps The USA out of WWII for too long, making Nazi Germany win the war, and history to change. [Interestingly enough, though the Enterprise disappears, the members of Kirk's landing party do not.] Here, the grandfather paradox still works itself out by eliminating one future, and replacing it with another, but inconsistently does not apply itself to itself, eliminating the self reference. Kirk is still there, even though he cannot be if the Enterprise is not in orbit around the planet. The same is true for McCoy. But if McCoy does not jump into the time machine, then how did the past unfold? Someone changed history. Where did that someone come from, if there is no Enterprise?

In the Terminator, the machines attempt to use the Grandfather paradox to eliminate the person who threatens their victory. But it is not clear what happens to the reality that the cyborg and John Conner's world if the cyborg wins. Be that as it may, the Terminator suggests a strongly deterministic view, where the changes that someone appears to make actually are the things which happened to lead to the future that 'really' happens. Here time travel is possible, and does not lead to the paradox. Instead, Like Oedipus Rex, attempting to avoid our fate leads us right to it. I suppose that if we were to go back and kill our grandfather, we may only discover that he was not our grandfather, but that our grandmother had an affair, so that we are still born, and can still go back in time. Time becomes something that has an endless loop within, as each time the future reaches the point where someone goes back in time, they go back, and do the exact same things.

More next week.

Friday, March 5, 2010

MSU Philosophy Club Meeting Today, 1:00

There will be a meeting of the philosophy club, Friday March 5th, 1:00 in Kaufman 241. Everyone is welcome.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Sports and Bands

By Hanno

OK, as I went to work today, I started thinking about something quite different from what I promised. OK, Krista, I always promise*, and I promise* I will return to Rousseau and the state of Nature next time.

Instead, I want to talk about a strange phenomenon, which we might call 'sport team identification.' The phenomenon to which I refer is when a fan so identifies with the team she follows, that she starts referring to the team in the first person plural. This does not happen for the causal observer. So, when the casual observer watches a team win, he may say to a friend 'They won.' But when a fan watches the same team play, they will describe it as "We won," this despite the fact that the fan knows they contributed absolutely nothing to the victory, and indeed, is embarrassed about that when it is pointed out. And make no mistake, the wins and loses feel personal. To the fan, they really did win and lose, in a certain sense.

But the same identification does not occur in other similar phenomenon. No one watches a band, say the Grateful Dead, and describes it in the first person plural. no one says "We were awesome!" after the show. If an identification is made, it is of a different sort. The fans experience of the show is different from the casual observer, but not in a way that inspires identification.

My question: Why do we identify with sports teams? How does it become personal? And why does that not happen in other similar circumstances?

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Philosophy Club Meeting Tomorrow [Friday]


Monday, February 22, 2010

State of Nature

By Hanno










Other conceptions next

Friday, February 12, 2010

Next Weeks Post


Thursday, February 11, 2010

Philosophy Club Meeting



Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Monday, February 8, 2010

Kant and the Holocaust

By Hanno












Monday, February 1, 2010


By Hanno




