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I have been perusing an old book by Simon Blackburn called Spreading the Word.  In it, Blackburn has a very helpful little section describing the relationship between mind, language, and the world in the form of a triangle the corners of which are connected to one another by theories. The mind corner is connect to the world by a theory of knowledge and connected to the language corner by a theory of meaning. The world corner is connected to the language corner by a theory of truth. The idea is that one chooses a corner from which to develop theories for the sides. The task then becomes ensuring that one's corner contains a sufficient factual basis for all the three theories involved (meaning, knowledge, truth). Say you pick the world. The question is: what facts about the world provide the materials for your theories of meaning, truth, and knowledge? Say you pick the human mind. One would have to explain how sentences in natural languages have meanings, how those meanings c...

"...the statement that gold is malleable is true if and only if gold is malleable. The 'content' of a statement--what it states to be the case--gives us everything we need to specify what it takes for the statement to be true. In practice this means the 'that' clause--the content specifying clause--that tells us what statement we are referring too can also be used to make explicit what it takes for the statement to be true. Nothing more is required for the truth of the statement, and nothing less will suffice. In particular, and looking forward to the main alternative to this account of truth, there are no epistemic requirements for the truth of my statement. It is not required that any person or any social group, however defined, know that gold is malleable or be justified or rational in believing it. It is not required that science be destined, in that far-off divine events towards which inquiry moves, to arrive at the conclusion that gold is malleable. It is no...

There is a difference between being materialistic and being a materialist . If you are materialistic, you value material things above non-material things. By materialism I don't mean the valuing of material things. What I mean is the view that there is nothing that exists that is immaterial. A material thing is some entity which is possible to experience. Some material things are so small you can't see them, but it would be possible to experience them if one's senses were adequate or if the thing in question was bigger. Of course, if you are a materialist, then you will very likely be materialistic. That's all there is, after all. What I mean by stink is some undesirable state of affairs. Getting a large bill from the mechanic is an undesirable outcome (for me, not the mecahanic). War is an undesirable state of affairs. Getting sick is undesirable. These things stink. My claim is that the non-stinkyness of certain states of affairs gives us reasons to think th...

This election season has produced a lack of trust. This is especially true in the media. In a recent article in WaPo a journalist complained to Alberto Ibargüen, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, "that we no longer have trusted sources in our 21st century, social-media environment." Ibargüen's repose is telling: “How can there be,” he asked, “until we figure out … how to decide what a trusted source is?" What I want to suggest is that we need to re-build an atmosphere of trust. There are two virtues involved in doing so. The first is perhaps quite trivial in principle but we seem to be in an era when it is difficult to practice - telling the truth. I will leave aside the discussion of what we mean by truth and I will assume you think there is such a thing and that you desire, on the most part, to tell the truth. Instead I will focus on the second virtue - trust. This simple virtue entails the following: Give some level of credence to...

We are almost certainly on the brink of a post-Christian Western culture. In  Almost Christian,  Kenda Creasy Dean paints a bleak picture of youth culture and its relationship to the church: “American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith--but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduate from high school” (3). I want to provide some practical strategies that are not only focused on how we lead our young in the faith, but in how we ourselves carry and practice our faith. Here are six strategies for passing on the faith: