Truth

Is the truth important?

Most people would answer 'yes' but by their actions the answer would be 'no'. A lot of times in Christianity, in order to avoid conflict we don't call people out on false doctrines. I had a prof. at SWBTS who was convinced that everyone on TBN was a legitimate Christian - despite heresies that may be declared by some of those tv preachers. Right now I am reading a biography about Jonathan Edwards - the greatest American theologian, and perhaps the greatest American thinker. It is amazing how much opposition he faced by people who wanted him to maintain the status quo. Edwards was voted out of his church that he pastored because he only wanted Christians to receive communion. He argued that there ought to be visable signs of conversion. Now, Edwards loosely interpreted visable signs. His purpose was to show the community how serious the Lord's Supper is, however, people who didn't claim Christianity believed that it was their right to receive the Lord's Supper. I don't know why people who aren't Christians would want to participate in communion, this baffles me. Yet, knowing that he would lose his position as pastor Edwards maintained his biblical stance in the face of opposition. It saddens me today in the church that truth is not as significant as unity or growth. Unity is only important in so far as God is glorified, the same with growth. God is not glorified through unbiblical unity. Nor is God glorified with false teaching. However, unity in many ways is the easy road to take - just ignore someone's false doctrine or gossip about it. The Bible is explicit, we are to confront others 1 on 1, then if that individual doesn't repent we ought to confront them with 2 or 3. It is hard to confront people, most of us don't like confrontation - myself included. Yet, in order to honor God, we must honor and preserve the truths that He has given and revealed to us.

Official Story

Ok, my internet friend has requested that I tell the official proposal story, so here it is:

I proposed to my friend from IL on Thursday, so here are the events of Thursday. We drove to Chicago to go to lunch at Frontera Grill. Which is Rick Bayless's restraurant. Rick Bayless has a cooking show on PBS and specializes in authentic Mexican food. When my friend was in TX last we made some of the recipes together for her b-day dinner and for dessert made flan. So, we decided that it would be a good idea to try out Frontera Grill - it is ranked #2 casual dining in the United States. The prices are about the same as On the Border or Don Pablos. Lunch was great.

After lunch we drove about 45 minutes to the sand dunes in Indiana on the beaches of Lake Michigan. The waves on Lake Michigan were picturesque and beautiful. It was about 50 degrees so we kept warm w/ some blankets and watched the waves. Then the sun came out and it warmed up I asked my friend if she would spend the rest of her life w/ me. Then I asked her if she would marry me. She was totally surprised, because I hid the ring in my wallet. She had looked for a ring box, but didn't see one. Then my friend spent the rest of the day looking at the ring.

It was a 1.22 carat ruby on a solitare white gold band. The ruby measures about 6.2 mm in diameter.

Summer Reading

It seems that the summer has officially begun... now it's time for summer reading.

Hopefully tomorrow, I can update everyone w/ some scintilating philosophical thoughts from my summer reading.

My trip to IL

Well my trip to IL was a success - I have come back engaged! The wedding will be December 10! Hooray for me!

Last papers

Just emailed my last paper - I'm too tired to properly focus on Aristotle's modal logic right now... in about 7 hours I will be on a plane headed towards Chicago. I had better get some sleep.

End of the Semester

Well, hopefully by 4am this morning, I will have emailed all of my professors my papers.

Then at 12:50 I will fly to Bloomington/Normal IL.

Screech (err Dustin Diamond) lives!!!

Check this out, it's Dustin Diamond aka Screech Powers answering questions of an online chat. The occasion was that the mascot for the Washington Nationals is named Screech.

that time of the semester

It is now officially that time of the semester...

What time would that be? The time when there is so much stress it's difficult to sleep yet the stress makes me continually tired. Ahh, the paradox of the end of the semester. Everything can be cured by a good nights sleep, that is, if you can get to sleep ;)

Pragmatics or Syntax????

So in my philosophy of language seminar today, we all stayed 50 minutes after class discussing the syntactic features of the following utterances. These are the cases that make me love philosophy of language.

(1) The chicken cooked.
(2) The chicken overcooked.
(3) My foot is on fire.
(4) My foot is in the fire.

So what are the differences between (1) & (2)? What do you think (1) & (2) mean when you utter them? What are the differences between (3) & (4)?

We were discussing whether the features of the utterances are bases ypon syntax, or usage. There seems to be something that I think is a syntactic element in the above utterances, but I don't know what it is...

It's too much Aristotelian Logic for Justin - well, not any more

So, I was very overwhelmed the other night and some of tonight with my Arisotle paper. As I recently explained the square of opposition, now apply the modal operators 'necessarily' or 'possibly' to the categorical sentences. Quick review: Aristotle has 4 categorical sentences, a e i o. I will list them out
a = All p's are q's
e = No p's are q's
i = some p's are q's
o = some p's are not q's
So now, you take the categorical sentences and add 'necessarily' or 'possibly'. So categorical sentence 'necessarily'a = necessarily all p's are q's. This is de dicto modality, because the sentence 'all p's are q's' is necessarily true, it cannot be false. Now, if I wanted de re modality I would say, 'all p's necessarily are q's'. A de re modality claims that the subject necessarily has the predicate attributed to it. So let's use the example of 'All humans are rational'. A de re expression of this sentence is: 'All humans, necessarily, are rational'. That means that if you are a human, then you are rational. (Now, whether or not rationality is a property of all humans is a different question, this is just an example.)

So the problem with Aristotle's modal logic is that he doesn't do a de re or de dicto modality. What he has is a modalized copula - and I am not really sure about what this is or how it is different from a de re modality. So, if I don't understand the difference by the time I finish writing my paper, I will argue that the author who presents the view of the modalized copula commits the logical fallacy of making a 'distinction without difference'. Otherwise, I will argue in my paper that he presents a sucessful argument.