Category: Philosophy

intention?

Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action.

Wikipedia

A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person.

Wikipedia

So Intentions are decisions and choices within an individual to act – a resolution! By their very nature, these resolutions are not perceivable to the senses – they cannot be measured. So individual’s intention can only be assumed and never known, especially if the person has not communicated their intention.

Just saying …

absurdism

Absurdism is the philosophy that there is no true meaning of life, so humanity’s attempts to find one are, essentially, absurd.

What is aburdism?

Simple yet a good start. Life does not owe me meaning. Why does life need meaning? Why does my life need a purpose? Do I need to know the outcome before I start?

Kierkegaard speaks about it in Fear and Trembling. The single individual’s job is not to conform to the universal or the moral.

skepticism

Skepticism arises from our desire to know without the self being transformed. Ironically skepticism is but the result of our anxious desire to secure certainty by being “at home in the world.”

Harvey. Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge

liminal space?

I have been trying to organise some thoughts around the religious life. And I found this quote:

The liminal space is an invitation to surrender – an invitation to give over to something larger than self and trust that we will be held and supported with whatever we need in order to navigate the uncertainty. The degree to which we are comfortable or uncomfortable has to do with how we choose to be with what is happening. We can choose to fight against the liminal space and struggle, or to flow with it by listening, sensing, and responding.

The Liminal Space – Embracing the Mystery and Power of Transition from What Has Been to What Will Be

Maybe the older mystical writers would call it “the cloud of unknowing”? There is a sense in which the religious life, or Christianity as a whole, is a “what if” life. I think the current Archbishop of Canterbury said that?!

feelings?

Sometimes I reflect on the many things that I have heard in sermons throughout the years. For me, that includes some time in seminary.

So, I have been wondering:

Why can I not trust my feelings but I can trust my reasoning?

I cannot recall how many times I have been told that my feelings are untrustworthy but my reasoning I can trust. (And let’s assume that hermeneutics is a form of reasoning.) But how realistic is that? Or, maybe more importantly, how human is that?

Happy to read any answers!

accept to expect

I have been meaning to write this for a couple of days. While having a coffee I was challenged (indirectly) by someone to move from “accept to expect”. And I have been reflecting on that for a couple of days.

I really like that! Not “I accept God will come to my help” but “I expect God to come to my help”. I think there is a sense of action in being “expectant” on God. As the shift from “choice” to “resolution” is a movement toward action, from possibility to actuality, so “accepting” to “expecting” is a movement.

I think, in a way, that is the movement that Kierkegaard expects (!!) in faith. The change from possibility to actuality. The movement from having faith in Jesus to imitating Jesus in my daily life. Maybe that is what the Brethren of the Common Life called “conversion”. From the head to the heart?!

Is that too over the top philosophical?

usefulness?

I have been reading The Handmaid’s Tale and watching the TV version. I am not sure if that is confusing me or making it a little easier.

This morning I thought of Immanuel Kant:

Kant’s formulation of humanity, the second section of the categorical imperative, states that as an end in itself, humans are required never to treat others merely as a means to an end, but always as ends in themselves.

Kanthian ethics

Part of the objectification of people is using them for their usefulness. We rank people according to how they may serve society and we reward those who are more useful and punish those who are not useful. The Handmaids are simply a more extreme example of how we trend people as a means rather than an end.

I feel my uselessness. No skills for the greater good, sickness dragging down and costing society, without purpose or end. I am very forgettable.

No answer or insight! Simply that people are much more than their usefulness.

experience

During the week the theme of “experience” has surfaced a couple of times. It reminded me of a thought experiment sometimes called Mary’s Room. I think it highlights the importance of experience. And, by extension, to experience Jesus is better than to know about Jesus.

Also: I think the above is what Kierkegaard writes about in Philosophical Fragments.

Anyway, read the thought experiment and think about it:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like “red”, “blue”, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence “The sky is blue”. … What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

love the truth?

So here is a completely random idea: what if we were to stop talking about knowing the truth and start talking about loving the truth? Or, to put it in Christian terms, what if we were to stop talking about knowing Jesus and start talking about loving Jesus?

While I kinda understand the idea of knowing something, I think it has been drawn into a direction that is not helpful for our relationship with Jesus. It makes the relationship all about our head and then our heart. Let’s turn that around and make it about the heart exclusively. Let’s make it a human relationship rather than an intellectual.

I want to write about this more but I think this is a start!