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Showing posts from July, 2009

Aristotelian Determinism: A Solution

Rational Analysis Truth is absolute, unchangeable, final. Future truth must also be absolute, unchangeable, and final. Therefore, future truth is necessary truth, not contingent. Empirical Analysis In those things which are not continuously actual, potentiality is multi-directional. Therefore, events don’t occur of necessity. Solution: Truth value in future statements exists as potentiality and not as necessity, since it is quantified by the now. This means that, future statements are contingent upon time. Past statements, however, are necessarily true or false, since they belong to an actualized time. Truth value is inseparable from phenomenon; phenomenon is inseparable from time.

Epistemic Foundations of Religious Worldviews

Man's attempt to understand himself and his world around him can be divided into three ways: 1. The way of authority. Much of what we know is based on this secondary source of information. Newspapers, books, teachers, TV shows, social consensus, religious authority, Scriptures, etc are few examples of this. We have epistemic value tags for any given source claiming authority of knowledge. For instance, one might rate a popular newspaper as more credible than a not-so-popular newspaper. Some Indian schools of philosophy do not consider it right for Scriptural revelation to be treated at par with these other secondary sources (some even consider authority as subject to the way of reason for including interpretation, which is a way of reasoning). 2. The way of experience. This refers to sense-experience and also includes the mystic experience in the Indian philosophical classification (the word pratyaksha refers to direct or immediate perception). 3. The way of reason. Arithmetic a