[essay] The Constitution of Culture

The truth of the common good, as what we rightly ought to seek in our cultural realities and, therefore, as the final cause of any political constitution, does not alone suffice to cause that cultural reality’s alignment.  We must instead recognize a more complex causal constitution.  It is just this causality that was acknowledged—though not well-enough explained—by Jacques Maritain in his Integral Humanism, and it is just this causality which we will take up to explain in this essay.… Read More [essay] The Constitution of Culture

[article] On the Cenoscopic and the Idioscopic

We are accustomed to viewing polarities in the world of knowledge lined up like adversaries: science versus religion; the sciences versus the humanities; the old science versus the new science, and so on. Recent attempts to arbitrate in the matter have been few and confused. But there was one exception. C. S. Peirce borrowed a pair of concepts from Jeremy Bentham, steeped them in the stew of his own particular genius, and passed them on to posterity. Mostly ignored, they were finally picked up by John Deely a century later. They play a crucial role in negotiating a newly identified homeland for philosophy, allowing it to survive its near shipwreck in recent times. A sustained meditation on their full implications, however, takes us even further. Still honoring the conquests of modern science, a restored epistemic homeland is offered not only to traditional philosophy, but also to the otherwise marginalized realms of the humanities and religion.… Read More [article] On the Cenoscopic and the Idioscopic

[Issue] The Philosophy of Realism

From the Editorial Introduction: This first issue of Reality—The Philosophy of Realism—like most publications and especially those of a collaborative effort, signifies innumerable hours of effort.  The goal of our journal is simple: to reinvigorate an intelligent discussion about realism as a philosophical approach.  By a realist approach, we mean not simply as pertains to… Read More [Issue] The Philosophy of Realism

[article] Signs and Reality

ABSTRACT: The world today has a “meaning” problem.  That is: while the attainment of “meaning” poses a perennial difficulty common to every human life in every human age, our lives in this age have a problem with attaining meaning—indeed, a twofold problem.  First, the problem being that we do not know, precisely, to what the term “meaning” refers; and second, the problem being that even if we recognize one aspect or more of the term’s referent, we do not understand how it can be resolved into a coherent whole, for we lack the requisite principles. Among the obstacles preventing both the attainment of the meaning of “meaning” and its coherent resolution are myriad misunderstandings of what it means to say that we “know reality”; misunderstandings which not only fall short but miss the mark entirely.    More must be done in order to explain both how realism is possible and just what falls into the reality which realism is said to make known. At the heart of the struggle for realism is the question of to what extent and in what regard the cognitive means of knowing are the same as the object known.  This question is especially central to the Thomistic tradition, for Thomas often refers to the species intelligibilis as a similitudo of the object known.  Various misinterpretations and muddy explanations of this reference have hindered an understanding of how the human intellect knows its object. To resolve this Thomistic problem and the problems of meaning, we propose a semiotic realism, a realism that structures its doctrines in accord with the nature of signs and that accordingly understands the species intelligibilis as fragmentary, incomplete, and in need of continual deliberate interpretational refinement in order that we attain a better grasp on the truth of the real.… Read More [article] Signs and Reality

[Article] Reality and the Meaning of Evil

“Evil is really only a privation.”  This philosophical commonplace reflects an ancient solution to the problem of theodicy in one of its dimensions: is evil of such a nature that it must have God as its author? Stated in this particular way, it also reflects the commonplace identification of the real with natural being—the realm of what exists independently of human thought and perspectives—as opposed to all that is termed, by comparison, “merely subjective” and “unreal”.   If we stick with this way of construing the meaning of “reality”, then by the excellent arguments of the tradition we are also stuck with defending the sufficiency of privation as a response to what evil “really is”.… Read More [Article] Reality and the Meaning of Evil

[article] Interpretation and Traditions

ABSTRACT: My topic today develops some themes found or at least suggested in both Ens Primum Cognitum and The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology but focuses on one in particular: namely, why people are so quick to develop and obstinate in maintaining bad intellectual positions—not in terms of the historical causes which have contributed to the state of bad thinking prevalent today, but in terms of the cognitive capacities themselves; that is, what happens in the person as cognitive agent when falsehoods are adopted and subsequently protected.… Read More [article] Interpretation and Traditions