Children acquire natural languages. How they are capable of doing so is mysterious. A child appears to go from learning a few words and sentences to knowing how to construct infinite sentences in her learned language. Such a mystery provoked a long-lasting debate between empiricists and nativists. Empiricists about language acquisition hold that there is no innate knowledge ‘in the mind’ of a language learner without which the learner could not acquire a natural language. Nativists, by contrast, hold that there must be some innate feature of human minds (beyond the mere dispositional power to learn) that makes language acquisition possible for human beings In order to explain the phenomena…
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Capacities and Abilities
A capacity is kind of power, but it is not the same as an ability. An ability is a power that an agent has to perform some action. It is “a power to originate changes in the environment.” In contrast, a capacity is “a causal power…an invariable disposition to react to certain determinate changes in the environment in certain determinate ways.” (Van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will, 10-11). For example, Van Inwagen distinguishes between the capacity to understand and the ability to speak. The distinction lies in the fact that though someone who has the capacity to understand French has no choice over whether or not to understand French sentences…
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From Spy School to Bible School
Spy School I was brought up in a home of wealth and security in England. At seven years old I was sent to a prestigious boarding school in the south of England. My father worked in the city of London and might have expected me to follow suit. I had different plans. Ever since my exposure to James Bond I had wanted to be a spy. My Grandfather—who had worked for the British foreign office for much of the cold war—had introduced me to 007 at an early age and spying had become my obsession. When I was nine years old my parents bought me a book called “The Secret…
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Should Christians Partake in Formal Debates About God?
Martin Lloyd-Jones was against formal debates with unbelievers. Why? His first reason is that no one comes to faith through a debate. Thus, debates are not useful. However, though the debate opponent rarely comes to faith, Dr. William Lane Craig (who debates non-believers regularly) claims people in his audiences do so. Debates are not merely showdowns between two people with opposing views, but showcases of opposing views allowing audiences to to hear both sides. Loyd-Jones then says that the topic of God is too serious a matter for public debate. I’m not clear what he means at this point. Isn’t a ‘formal’ debate as serious as one can get? What…
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Feinberg on Natural Revelation
“Natural revelation unveils to all humans, regardless of time and place in history, the truth that a supreme being, God, exists, and it demonstrates something of his divine attributes such as power, wisdom, and goodness. These truths are known through the use of reason applied to the created and preserved (in existence) universe. In addition, apart from any form of special revelation, each human has a basic moral sense of right and wrong, an understanding of some basic rules of moral conduct, and a conscience that accuses those who disobey the rules and exonerates those who obey. Each person, by the light of human reason reflecting on these moral rules…
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Alston on Truth
“…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…
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Notes: George Bealer’s “The Incoherence of Empiricism”
According to George Bealer, empiricism is committed to three principles. First, an empiricist is committed to “the principle of empiricism” namely that “a person’s experiences and/or observations comprise the person’s prima facie evidence.” Second, “the principle of holism” according to which “a theory is justified…for a person if and only if it is, or belongs to, the simplest comprehensive theory that explains all, or most, of the person’s prima facie evidence” Finally, according to Bealer, the empiricist is committed to “the principle of naturalism” according to which, “the natural sciences…constitute the simplest comprehensive theory that explains all, or most, of a person’s experiences and/or observations.” Bealer argues that such a view is incoherent.…
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Feser Interview
Here’s an interview with Ed Feser, author of Five Proofs of the Existence of God: Feser’s presentation of the ‘Aristotelian’ proof is well done.
