Author: Roland

  • Why it’s called “motion”

    I can’t believe it took me so long to realise this. Aristotelians sometimes (read: often) use the word “motion” to refer to change of any kind. Thus it is much broader than how we might use the word today. It’s certainly broader than mere change in location, but even we use it in a broader… →

  • The good of others

    Previously we discussed the general notion of natural goodness, and saw that the natures of things determine what is good or bad for them. In particular, our nature as humans determines what is good or bad for us. We also saw that with humans our actions take on a moral significance to the extent that the ends or means willed… →

  • Crutches and culture

    I was thinking about silly claims like “religion is a crutch” or “people are religious because of their culture.” It seems to me that these claims are either uninteresting or false. If taken as a claim that many religious people are religious because of perceived psychological benefits or cultural bias, it is uninteresting, at least… →

  • Links on living well

    I’ve come across two different links today that speak to the broad question of doing this whole “living” thing well: A blog post by Lydia McGrew in which she reminds us that “An irresistible urge to follow every ephemeral fad is not the mark of a life well-lived.” A TED talk by Barry Schwartz in… →

  • Happiness and joy

    I was thinking about the difference between happiness and joy, considered psychologically. The tricky thing with accounting for the difference is that any account of these two has to explain why happiness and joy seem related, but nonetheless why one can rejoice (ie. express joy) in the face of suffering (that is, experiencing sorrow, which… →

  • New blog title

    I’ve just changed the name of this blog from “//Roland’s Comments” to “Thinking Thought Out”. I’ve also changed the tag line from “Theology, Philosophy, Mathematics, Computer Science” to the quote from GK Chesterton that inspired the new name. I originally started this blog thinking I’d write about my four interests previously listed. On reflection, I’ve… →

  • New resources page

    I’ve added a new resources page to the blog. I’ll be updating it as I find new resources on various topics. I’ll try write posts that keep readers updated about new resources appearing. →

  • “Knowing” versus “knowing about”

    We can all agree that there is more to knowing someone than merely knowing a collection of facts about them. The latter we might call knowing about them, whereas the former is simply knowing them. James Chastek has recently written a blog post in which he distinguishes two senses of experience: (i) experience as sensation, and (ii) experience… →

  • Natural and moral goodness

    “Cats have four legs.” What an innocent statement. Who would’ve thought that unpacking it would lead us to a system of ethics? Natural goodness We start by noting that statements like this one don’t tell us some quantifiable fact about cats. Rather they tell us what features a cat has by virtue of which it… →

  • Craig’s timeless moment sans creation

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    William Lange Craig’s model of how God relates to time can be stated succinctly: God is timeless sans creation, and temporal since creation.[1] The reason we word it like this is obvious: he can’t be timeless before creation, since before-ness is a temporal relation and creation includes time itself. Craig holds this view largely because he… →