Tag Archives: Philosophical Terms

The Definition of American Politics

28 Sunday Jun 2015

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This post comes from something I just read. It seems to me that American politics can be defined with one word – vagueness; specifically, vagueness as defined in the philosophy of Phenomenology.

Sometimes the material we are talking about is beyond us; we really do not understand what we are saying. Much of what people say about politics, for example, is like this. Much of what they say is vague: slogans are repeated, favorite ideas are trotted out, statements made by others are stated verbally but without comprehension. Most public opinion polls measure vague thinking. The human power of speech, the noble power that give us our dignity as human beings, also makes it possible for us to seem to be thinking when we really are not. This is a specifically human way of failing to be what we should be, and it is very important in human affairs.

Introduction to Phenomenology, Robert Sokolowski, p. 105

Of course maybe the politicians really are thinking, but then if that is the case then they are in error about that which they believe to be true. Maybe it is really Americans in general that suffer from the malady of vagueness. Many Americans just jump on various bandwagons – like “marriage equality” – that they hear proclaimed by politicians and the media, assuming that what they are hearing is true and then not really thinking it through.

But I must admit, as Sokolowski points out a few pages later, that I too suffer from vagueness. In fact we all do at one point or another. We cannot begin to learn anything at all unless we start from vagueness and move toward understanding. And that is exactly what we need to do – move toward understanding. Do we really understand the various things that we profess to believe? Or do we just parrot back what we hear others say?

Chance and Absolute Chance

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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I have a sermon to write for Sunday, which prevented my posting yesterday and which leaves me no time to write anything original today. But in order to continue with our topic I am posting the definitions for ‘chance’ and ‘absolute chance’. I will have to leave any further explanation until after my sermon is written.

chance, n. and adj. 1. the unforeseen, the unintended. 2. the seeming absence of cause or design. 3. that which is said to happen without a deliberate purpose. 4. the accidental, the irregular, or the unusual in nature’s course. 5. that whose cause is indeterminable. Chance is not properly ascribed to the absence of efficient cause. Antonym – end, intention.

absolute chance, that which is not planned nor foreseen and permitted by any agent. Scholasticism denies this kind of chance occurence.

Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, Bernard Wuellner, S.J.

Definition of ‘Final Cause’

17 Monday Nov 2014

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Today’s post is part 2 to yesterday’s post: Lewis on Chance. In that post I mentioned a second opinion by a Catholic philosopher but that will have to wait until tomorrow because there is a term that must be defined before we move on to his opinion. Although, I will be quoting him today because that is where we encounter the term in question.

We frequently use such expressions as, ‘A game of chance,’ ‘This happened by chance,’ etc., to refer to various types of situations in our experience. This seems at first glance to deny the above thesis on the need of final causality to explain all action, as we have just established.

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

The term we need to understand here is ‘final cause’. St. Thomas, in his Summa Theologiæ, said “the first of all causes is the final cause.” I know that sounds counter-intuitive and it took me a while to understand it. What helped with my understanding of this term centers on the proper understanding of how St. Thomas is using the word ‘final’. To us it sounds like he is saying that the last in a series of events (the final cause) is actually the first, which makes no sense whatsoever. But that is not how the word final is being used. Instead, final means the end or purpose for something happening. And the final cause is linked to the efficient cause, although they answer different questions. (And here we need another definition: an efficient cause is that which causes an effect.) Fr. Clarke puts it thusly,

The efficient cause answers the question: Which being is responsible for this effect’s coming to be? The final cause answers the question: Why did this efficient cause produce this effect rather than that? For in many cases the same efficient cause can produce several different possible effects. (p. 202)

I suppose you could say that the final cause gives direction to the efficient cause so that there is actually an effect that takes place. Because, if there is more than one possible effect there must be something there to choose from all the options so that this effect happens rather than that one. Therefore, without a final cause – a purpose – would there be anything that ever happened at all?

Tomorrow (maybe), we will see how this applies to Fr. Clarke’s understanding of chance, and then later compare that with what Lewis had to say on the matter.

The Definition of Definition

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

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Sorry I disappeared for about two weeks. Last week was Fall Break for the Atonement Academy and even though my family and I did not go anywhere it was nice not to have to do anything in particular. The week before that was just busy.

I’ve decided to begin this re-start of blogging with a new category of posts – that being ‘Definitions’. The primary thing that has prompted this is the fact that, due to my increased reading of philosophy, I have had to look up very many terms in order to understand what I am reading. Some of them are terms that I never knew before and some are terms I only thought I knew before I discovered their true meanings.

It may be asked – why bother with such an endeavor? Because if we do not have a common understanding of the meaning behind the words we use then we cannot communicate with one another. If I say something is red in color then the listener, if he speaks English, understands what I am talking about. But when I am reading St. Thomas Aquinas there are many times I do not understand what he is saying because I do not understand what he means by this or that word (or any of them at all sometimes). By writing about these words and what they mean I hope to gain a better understanding for myself and perhaps someone else will as well.

To begin this category off it seems that the most logical place to start is with the definition of the word definition itself. I am taking my meaning from a book I recently purchased: The Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy by Bernard Wuellner, S.J. The section for the word ‘definition’ contains seven different senses in which it can be defined. Therefore, so this post does not get too convoluted, I have chosen just one of those senses to list here.

definition, n. 1. logical and philosophical senses. a proposition either stating the meaning of a term or explaining what an essence is.

But of course this definition leads to the necessity of another definition for the word ‘essence’. In the same book it describes essence as “what a thing is” (and I will stop there because this word deserves its own post). Therefore, when we are defining some particular thing, we are trying to describe what that thing is. I suppose many people would respond to this by saying “Yeah, duh!” Even though this definition of definition may seem obvious but it is not insignificant. The fact that we can define things so that others can understand what we are talking about shows us what kind of universe we live in: that being a universe where we can know what something truly is and are able to communicate that to others. The reason this is so important is because there are other philosophies that would say that we cannot really know anything at all. But if that were true then those who hold such philosophies would not be able to communicate what they mean to anyone else because no one would be able to understand what it was that they were trying to define. In fact, if we could not know things and define them then no one would be able to understand anything at all.