Three mysteries of the concrete: Causation, mind and normativity

Alexander Pruss, “Three mysteries of the concrete: Causation, mind and normativity”, Christian Philosophy 2022, online, Cracow, Poland, September, 2022

[@alithea9510]

I remember you mentioning this in your blog post! Nice work, Dr. Pruss!

[@RealAtheology]

Fantastic video Professor. I imagine these are among the main themes of your book on Aristotelian Theism? When will that be coming out?

[@williammcenaney1331]

That's another excellent lecture, Alex, my dear friend.

[@ChristianSigma]

Amazing video professor

[@Debiginger]

Getting some strong Leibniz vibes. I like it.

[@Djdu7228xnxj]

❤️🙌🏻

[@mf_hume]

I always have to chuckle when I see a philosopher who uses Beamer instead of PowerPoint.

[@markbirmingham6011]

Comment for traction

[@DigitalGnosis]

Three mysteries of words philosophers use!

[@Atheismisdead1]

Nobody likes you

[@MyContext]

*Do you still hold these views?* Much of what you presented struck me as odd given what seems to be known about the brain and the emergent concept that we denote as the mind. The conflation of our cognitive notions with reality was even odder for me. The map (cognitive constructions) is not the territory (reality). We construct all sorts of notions which are not an aspect of reality, but is useful for our sociological engagements such as the idea of responsibility. Mental laws? Why do you think this? We observe that our cognitive development is a product of our genetics and environment with the genetics providing the base template of processing and the environmental interactions providing an aspect of the content. It seems reasonable to conclude that each of us has a unique cognitive tapestry/model such that the idea of a law is a non-sequitur to the nature of what is in play. We can at best talk about what tends to be common, but the idea of a law seems to be an overreach given the dynamics involved. The labeling of arbitrariness seems to be about our ignorance as opposed to any feature of reality, since, at every level of review wherein we understand the details, there is nothing arbitrary at work. Why conflate morality with meaning? I find that each is a different cognitive construction. Natural normativity? We observe various aspects of reality as being generally the case thus when such is not the case it is not considered normal. This is a psychological construction that is often heavily biased based on preferences for some states of affairs as opposed to the reality that there are genetic issues such as mutations or "defects" which result in various variations not in keeping with what is normally observed within a particular span of time.

[@matswessling6600]

this isnt anything but word salad: aristotelian theism fails to explain anything.

[@11kravitzn]

Any mystery is "solvable" with God. God did it. God willed it so. About as informative and explanatory as saying "magic". Come back when youre interested in deepening our understanding and not just calling off the investigation with the one word "YHWH".

[@williammcenaney1331]

Please solve a mystery for us, @11kravitzn. Tell us why there's anything. If you answer the question scientifically, you'll reason circularly because science presupposes that there's something.