In his book The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle draws a distinction between four metaphysical/epistemic categories: epistemically objective, epistemically subjective, ontologically objective and ontologically subjective. It will be the purpose of this post to investigate the differences which lie between these four categories as well as provide some examples of each. (more…)
March 27, 2006
Begging Religious Questions
Religious answers to some of the questions which philosophy attempts to address can be seen as an effort (though not necessarily conscious) to avoid the questions altogether. The response which they give as to the origins of design, morality and purpose are all question begging. Now I fully understand that many religious people do not actually give such shallow answers to these questions, but it cannot be denied that those who do give them (and there are an awful lot that do) are religious. (more…)
