Currently Listening Deceiver By Chris Thile see related

it has been over 5 months since the last blog entry.  at Sir Marc's request, I am taking the bull by the horns and starting it up again.  I hope no one minds that I am writing on this without talking to anyone first.

Disclaimer:  All of what I am about to say stems from thoughts that have been birthed by my recent excessive listening of Tim Keller sermons.  So you can blame him for all of these ramblings : )

First Topic:  Aesthetics

1.  Keller discussed in length his love of J. R. R. Tolkein.  It seems that Tolkein, as most know that have read any of his works, has made his hatred for allegory very well known.  For this reason, despite his close friendship with C.S. Lewis, he deeply despised the Chronicles of Narnia.  I saw the second volume of the film adaptation and cried yet once again at Lewis' genius.  Never has a film caused me to yearn for another world so deeply and made me so hateful of sin.  It was a very emotional experience for me as it has been for so many others. 

Any viewer would tell you that it is pretty obvious that Asland is Jesus, the red bottle of liquid is the blood of Christ that heals us all, the kings and queens (Peter, etc.) are the disciples, and so on and so forth.  It is the gospel restated into a magical story. 

As such, I wonder the depth of such a story given the fact that it is so easily interpreted and far from subtle.  I rely upon Spiegel's talks in aesthetics to make my case.  Most of my Christian friends strongly abhor Christian music.  It is cliche, obvious, talentless, cheesy, etc.  However, those same friends love artists like Rosie Thomas, Sufjan Stevens, Mat Kearny, and Over the Rhine.  These groups seem to offer the sincere talent and thought that still holds to a deeply spiritual and moving foundation.

So, if you are still with me, I am wondering if the subtlety we find in artists like Tolkein and Stevens in respect to their spirituality is what makes their art so great?  What makes good art?  Are Lewis' "Chronicles" considered great for their message of the gospel or for the art that he creates in and of itself?

Second Topic:  Free-Will

2.  I know, I know . . . the very last topic that this blog needs to revisit.  However, Keller said something in one of his sermons that really had me thinking about my Calvinist thinking.  It all comes down to this:  can we have a changed heart by our own efforts?  Would not all Christians say that they first have a changed heart and then they change?  Must one choose to have their heart changed before God changes it?  And if they do want their heart changed, isn't that choice a change from God in and of itself?

I presume the Arminian would state the following timeline:

Desire for a changed heart - - ->  God changes their heart - - -> Heart changes as a result

But for the Calvinist, it looks a bit different:

God changes their heart - - -> Desire for changed heart - - -> God changes their heart further - - -> Heart changes as a result.

I should make the clarification that I mean changing one's heart in relation to salvation.  The one thing I don't understand is if a person in and of themselves creates their own desire for a changed heart apart from the help of God (in order to protect their free-will), is there heart already changed to a degree to accept salvation?  Arminians would have to concede that it is all about the degree of change.  That to me seems a bit, ridiculous.  Call me simplistic, but either man changes his own heart or God does.  And if man changes his own heart, what then is the role of the Holy Spirit?  And where does the credit go?  The Arminian might say that it is all God's glory to be had despite the fact that he made the first step toward salvation (again, the degree issue I am still taking into account for the sake of charity).  But that still doesn't make sense.  Why would any glory go to a God that allows some people to perish if they are too ignorant to know a better way?  It seems that if the Arminian relies on the degree of change to account for salvation, he then must concede that God is awfully unloving since he allows us all to have the same ability to choose him when some still reject him.  Why would he not choose to give the one's with more of a tendency to reject him less free-will so that they might be saved?

That probably made zero sense.  Forgive me.

Unreliable Virtue and Reliable Vice (epistemically speaking)

    "Reliabilism and virtue epistemology are two predominant views in epistemology which have intuitive attraction and yet are rarely considered simultaneously. This paper will hopefully provide the reasoning for the pursuit of an explicit relationship between virtue epistemology and reliabilism. I find that the two can not only benefit from such a relationship, but also that they individually suffer deficiencies due to the absence of the other. It seems to me that if I can show that both an unreliably virtuous knower and a reliably vicious knower are epistemically deficient or unsatisfactory, then it would be reasonable to say that a view which considers reliabilism and virtue epistemology in conjunction with one another would be desirable.  

            What follows is hopefully an understanding that there are major gains that can be had from considering a partnership of virtue epistemology and reliabilism, but also that there are losses from ignoring such a partnership. This will rise from a description of two hypothetically poor knowers. The first knower possesses virtue without reliable cognitive processes and abilities (or diminished processes) and herein will be described as “unreliably virtuous” (UV). The second knower possesses a reliable cognitive framework but lacks epistemic virtues such as open-mindedness, and herein will be called “reliably vicious” (RV).

            Admittedly, this may seem to be a contrived attempt to create a forced connection between two epistemic stances which may very well not need each other at all. And perhaps one may reject that there ever could be such a knower that could be described as UV in reality (as Linda Zagzebski does in Virtues of the Mind). The RV knower could be likewise rejected as implausible or merely hypothetical. But I think that both can be reasonably demonstrated to be at least plausible, and it is this task which will dominate the discussion here."

Concerning Hollywood and Broadway

Testing the water and asking (Jimm) a question

A Cute Argument Against the Set of all Facts

So I was writing my weekly write-up for Analytic Philosophy, and I have to write on Wittgenstein.  I gave an argument against something he says (I think), and thought I'd put it up.  I doubt this will cause much discussion, but no one is posting...I can't believe this logic class has finally been useful. 

Wittgenstein seems to be committed to the notion that there is the set of all facts, saying, “The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.”[1]  But this is a difficult dogma to accept.  Consider the set of all facts F, and the set of all sets of facts, the powerset of F.  For any particular fact, it is either a member of a set of the powerset of F or it is not a member of a set of the powerset of F.  So for every member of the powerset of F, there will be a fact: that some particular fact is a member of that set or it is not.  It follows from this that there are at least as many facts as members of the powerset of F.  But Cantor’s power set theorem tells us that the power set of any set is bigger than the set.  So, there will be more facts than there are members of F.  But this cannot be, for F just is the set of all facts.[2]  So there can be no set of all facts.  And so, given Wittgenstein’s assertion that the world is the totality of facts, there can be no world.