Future thoughts about phil. mind & language

As I have previously mentioned in this blog, I'm working on three areas of specialization in philosophy: philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. So last night I was discussing with some of my evangelical friends the kind of philosophical research I envision myself doing in the future. Two classes that I would definitely like to teach in a Christian seminary setting include, religious language, and the philosophical theology of the soul. Every aspect of philosophy that I do, I always anticipate how this will relate to philosophy of religion, and how I ought to think about this topic as a Christian philosopher. Though I do enjoy particular aspects of mind & language. For instance, I am really intrigued by the semantics/pragmatics debate between minimalism and contextualism - this debate mainly involves 'What is said?' Is 'What is said?' closer to the meaning of the sentence meaning, or is it closer to the speaker's intentions. There are counterintuitive consequences of the former, and the latter ultimately depends upon intuitions. Yet, I always bring it back to how this pertains to Christian ideas, and where I see this application leading towards is biblical hermeneutics. Oh well, that's enough random musings for today... nothing too exciting really.

Intermediate State

So now that I've thought through the monism/dualism debate in Christian theology, I've come down on the side of the dualist. Why's this? There are a couple of reasons. First, let me explain some of the important factors in this decision that must be taken into consideration. We only experience the fullness of life upon the physical bodily resurrection. When we go to heaven, it is a partial existence; disembodied states for Christians are not a fuller better existence than a physical state - if this were true than gnosticism wouldn't be a heresy. Jesus died on the cross to show us what we had to look forward to.

(1) There does seem to be some type of existence after death, though not a full existence according to the scriptures.

(2) As far as philosophical theories go, physicalism appears to be false.

(3) Worship requires intentionality (aboutness), and there aren't any naturalistic theories of intentionality that work.

This is now why I am a dualist, notice that I am a dualist for philosophical and theological reasons. Now I just have to decide how a correct theory of dualism works.

One-night Vacation

Some people go on cruises for their vacations, I go to my uncle's ranch in Foyil, OK. Not very exciting, but there's always a lot of food to eat.

After the Patriots/Steelers game I left Foyil to head back to Norman, probably 30 minutes from Oklahoma City all the cars on the road stopped - upon getting out of my car and looking there was a semi on fire. So I was able to walk around on I-44 whose speed limit is 75 because all traffic had come to a standstill waiting for the truck to be moved. So about 3 hours later I was able to continue my journey back to Norman.

I waited longer for traffic to move than the entire trip takes from my uncle's to Norman. Not fun.

I got home about 15 mintutes ago.

Phil Language Reading

Still waiting for the book to come that I am supposed to start reading for phil of language, Literal Meaning, but I have time to read it - I need to read chapters 1 & 2 by Wednesday.

In the meantime I'm reading 4 or 5 journal articles: "Logic and Conversation", "Speech Acts and Pragmatics", "Conversational Implicature", and "The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters".

This reading will keep my occupied during my Friday day, I'll be happy if I've completed reading 3 of these articles after Friday has finished. In addition I also need to read some Aristotle and read for my epistemology class this weeekend.

First day of a new semester...

Today is over and it's now tomorrow, or is it tomorrow is now today??? Anyway, I have finished my first day of school. I think that I should profit a great deal from this semester and learn a lot from all of my classes. I am excited about that - my prayer is that everything I learn will bring greater glory to God.

I did not go to the class that I am auditing (Ancient and Medieval Religious Philosophy) today... it took me too long to find the classroom.

In my epistemology class we talked about 'Knowledge = Justified True Belief' and infinite regresses with respect to knowing that p.

In the Aristotle class we were given a brief overview of Aristotle and a the 'comic book' version of Plato's philosophy so that we could understand the influence of Plato on Aristotle.

Semantics and Pragmatics

'Semantics and Pragmatics' is the title of my philosophy of language seminar. I read two articles tonight about the semantics/pragmatics distinction and I came to the conclusion that I am very excited about this seminar, and I am somewhat in over my head. Philosophy of Language is traditionally one of the most difficult and opaque subjects in philosophy, but I am interested because there aren't many Christian philosophers who do philosophy of language. Hence, there ought to be Christians doing philosophy of language.

So what is semantics? What is pragmatics? Both articles seemed to give different descriptions of each, but broadly constued semantics is what the words uttered mean. Pragmatics are what is implied by the words uttered. So if we take the utterance: 'On your left.' Semantics would tell us that this is relatively unhelpful apart from the context in which it is uttered. Perhaps we are driving down the road and I notice a deer to the left of the car and utter, 'On your left'. So this utterance has its full meaning upon understanding the context in which the utterance occurs.

Hopefully I can give a better description of the topic that I am covering later on... especially how it is related to the speech-act theory hermeneutic of Scripture.

New Semester ... hopefully different results...

Tomorrow everything begins anew, the semester starts. This Spring, I will have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Tuesday: 1:30-2:45 Ancient and Medieval Religious Philosophy; 4:30-5:45 Epistemology; 7:00-9:45 Aristotle

Wednesday: 3:00-5:45 Seminar in Philosophy of Language

Thursday: 1:30-2:45 Ancient and Medieval Religious Philosophy; 4:30-5:45 Epistemology

The Ancient and Medieval Religious Philosophy course I am only auditing, hopefully I will be able to learn from that course. I need to get all A's this semester and get my GPA above 3.5. Right now it's a 3.3, needs to improve.

I'm off to Borders to read, hopefully I can explain what I read on my next blog post, because I have two articles I need to read for my philosophy of language seminar before class starts.