A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization

Just ran across Overman's A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, and will probably get the hardcover. Check it out here. Added to bibliography.

Self-Referential Analyzer In Stores Now

Actually, naturalism, materialism, and mechanism are all teleological parasites (among many other parasitic behaviors shrouded in never-mentioned self-referential slights of cognitive hand). So next time you're at the pharmacy, look for the Self-Referential Analyzer, to permanently eliminate common philosophical parasites from your intellectual life, and that of your friends and family.

Self-Referential Analyzer: Get one. Be one.

Naturalism as Teleological Parasite

What modern biology reveals to us is the existence of a physical structure that points to or aims at something beyond itself and yet is entirely unconscious. Where have we heard that before? Why, in Aristotle, of course. Moreover, as a blueprint, what this structure points to or aims at specifically is the realization in an individual organism of a certain kind of structure or pattern definitive of the species---that is to say, the realization of a form or essence. "Modern" biology isn't so modern after all; the riffs are different, but underlying the jazzy hipster talk of "information and "software" is the same old squaresville melody of Aristotelian final-formal causality. Modern science, like all rebellious adolescents, has morphed into the father figure it once reviled.

--Slightly redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 255.

Another Magic Talisman

The moderns didn't reject belief in God for resting on blind faith. They falsely accused belief in God of resting on blind faith so that they could justify their rejection of God, and cooked up a new conception of what should count as rational, hoping that the accusation would stick.

--Highly redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 221

Sociopaths are Epistemologically Equal Too

It's very hard for liberals to maintain their smug pose of moral and rational superiority over traditional religious believers and other non-liberals if they admit that their own ideals are merely one more set of ungrounded prejudices among others.

--Redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 216

Prophetic Criminology

The legislative response is always---always---to crack down on the law-abiding. "

--Commenter john_ell over at the Washington Times

Feser's Ontological Parts Warehouse: You Name it, We've Got it!

The real world is as complex as the vocabulary required to describe it.

--Slightly redacted from Edward Feser, The Last Superstition, page 171. I deliberately don't quote his actual core arguments because I want people to read the book. These examples are either just great quotes *about* the issues, aphoristic provocations such as the above, or sheer intellectual-cultural commentary. Always keep in mind that I'm only interested in his strictly philosophical views and arguments, and may not even agree with his act-potency, causation, hylemorphism, or his argument for God. The jury's still out, although so far I suspect his metaphysics is correct.