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Om författaren

David Ray Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University (1973-2004); Co-Director, Center for Process Studies. He edited the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought (1987-2004), which published 31 volumes. visa mer He has written 30 books, edited 13 books, and authored 250 articles and chapters. His most recent books are Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World and Unprecedented: Can Humanity Survive the CO2 Crisis? visa färre
Foto taget av: Photo by user Micheltomli / English Wikipedia

Verk av David Ray Griffin

9/11 and American empire (2007) — Redaktör — 60 exemplar
Deep Religious Pluralism (2005) — Redaktör — 39 exemplar
Varieties of Postmodern Theology (1989) — Författare — 20 exemplar
Jewish Theology and Process Thought (1996) — Redaktör — 18 exemplar
A process Christology (1973) 17 exemplar

Associerade verk

The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (2003) — Bidragsgivare — 261 exemplar
Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (1981) — Bidragsgivare — 168 exemplar
The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (2007) — Bidragsgivare — 68 exemplar
Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution (2008) — Bidragsgivare — 22 exemplar
The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (2013) — Bidragsgivare — 19 exemplar
Mormonism in Dialogue with Contemporary Christian Theologies (2007) — Bidragsgivare — 18 exemplar

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I have to finish crafting a review of a book that purports to refute materialism (the author has made quite a few errors in his presentation, not the least of which is misrepresenting the positions of targets of his attacks and trying to pass off the misrepresentations as fact. I’ve had to jump off to read Pinker’s tome How the Mind Workto confirm my assessment of that misrepresentation, and I took another side trip to this one to try to see what someone else has to say about the mind-body problem.

If I believed in a soul, this would crush it. I thought of “Dawkins’ Law of the Conservation of Difficulty”, which “ states that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Physics is a genuinely difficult and profound subject, so physicists need to – and do – work hard to make their language as simple as possible (‘but no simpler,’ rightly insisted Einstein). Other academics – some would point the finger at continental schools of literary criticism and social science – suffer from what Peter Medawar (I think) called Physics Envy. They want to be thought profound, but their subject is actually rather easy and shallow, so they have to language it up to redress the balance.”

Okay, the problem isn’t simple, but oh, my, philosophers love to language up their arguments. I don’t recommend engaging the author in a coffee shop debate without the help of Will Hunting. I also thought of Paul Dirac: “In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.” Substitute philosophy for poetry and Bob’s your uncle.

This won’t help many understand or unsnarl the world-knot. Dr. Griffin did no favors to the reader. His answer to the problem is something he calls panexperialentialism and the tortuous path he took to getting to it rumbles over philosophers who dream up unanswerable questions and then what they think are answers to them. He also apparently believed in paranormal nonsense (and 9/11 conspiracies, but that wasn’t part of this.)

You can read the book online for free here

I stopped highlighting and making notes when I realized that his arguments were no help, but here are some:

P241/2 Kim has been led to a dead end because, correctly seeing that a nonreductive materialism is impossible, he believes that there are only three other options, all of which are extremely problematic: reductive materialism, which reduces the psychological to the physical (as conventionally understood); eliminative materialism, which, realizing that reduction is impossible, excludes the psychological from its ontology; and ontological dualism, which rejects physicalism altogether. I have proposed a fourth option: a nonreductive, panexperientialist physicalism.

P9 This confusion is so serious because Problem 1 is based on a metaphysical assumption that is pure supposition, and one that, on reflection, is revealed to be dubious. After all, an amoeba, like a neuron, is a single-celled organism, and an amoeba shows signs of spontaneity suggestive of some slight degree of experience. If amoebas might have experience, why might not neurons in the brain have experience as well?

P12 The way these two types of thinkers [dualists and materialists] weigh data and arguments may at least be significantly influenced by their respective wishes and fears. In this way, the wish (or the fear) may be the parent of the paradigm.

P12 "The deepest motivation of materialism," Searle suggests, "is simply a terror of consciousness" with its "essentially terrifying feature of subjectivity," which most materialists think to be "inconsistent with their conception of what the world must be like"
{project, much? There is nothing terrifying about consciousness. This alone slides him into the fringe category.}

P15 Philosophers as well as scientists have failed to distinguish between the kind of common sense that science can sensibly reject and the kind that it cannot.

P23 When some principles are stated, they are usually scattered throughout the writing, making criticism difficult. Mutual criticism is especially important because even when principles are explicitly formulated, they are often formulated ambiguously.

P26 Some conscious states may be partly caused by previous conscious states (as prima facie seems to be the case in memory); some conscious states may be partially caused by influences that have not been transmitted through the brain (as seems to be the case in moral, logical, and religious experience, not to mention clairvoyance and telepathy);…
{um… best not to mention quackery at all}

P28 1. We should accept only a realistic theory about the "physical world."
a . This substantive principle rules out all idealisms that deny full-fledged actuality to the "physical world," making its reality dependent on its being perceived or conceived by mind.

P30 4. Our theory should be naturalistic .
a . This substantive regulative principle, which has recently been insisted on strongly by McGinn, entails not only the rejection of any explicit supernaturalism, according to which the natural causal nexus is said to be interrupted; it also entails the rejection of any doctrine that even implies the need for supernatural intervention.
{however, he goes off the edge with…}
d . Naturalism also does not necessarily rule out seemingly "paranormal" types of causal influence, such as extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. That would be the case if paranormal events were understood to be "miracles" involving interruptions of fundamental causal principles, but they need not be (and by parapsychologists usually are not) so understood.

P42 1. In mathematical and logical experience, the mind seems to be in touch with entities that are not only nonphysical but even nonactual, which the brain's sensory organs are not suited to perceive. Of course, under the pressure of a materialistic worldview—for example, McGinn says that to affirm a causal relation between abstract entities and human minds would be to affirm a nonnatural, even "funny," kind of causation

P43/44 6. There is considerable evidence, some of it of quite high quality and some of it vouchsafed by people of otherwise undoubted intelligence and honesty, for telepathy and clairvoyance. Current writers about the mind-body relation typically reject the possibility of extrasensory perception in this sense. But their rejections are usually a priori; few of them show signs of serious grappling with the evidence. Some philosophers and scientists who have seriously studied the evidence, such as [long list] became convinced (some of them, such as Freud, much against their wills) that these experiences sometimes really do involve nonsensory perception.

P45 I have, probably to the annoyance of some readers, listed several kinds of data that are especially difficult for a materialistic view of the mind to accommodate. I have done this deliberately, because most recent discussions, among both scientists and philosophers, have weighted the evidence one-sidedly in favor of evidence meant to be embarrassing to views that distinguish mind from brain, especially those that attribute some autonomous powers to the mind. […] In the current discussion, the tendency has been to stress the evidence that supports a materialistic view and then to look only at that part of the contrary evidence, such as consciousness itself, that is too obvious to everyone to be completely ignored. My discussion has sought to redress the imbalance.
It is very difficult, of course, for philosophers and scientists who have been socialized into one worldview to take seriously data that are, from that perspective, not respectable.[…] In any case, we need a theory that takes account of all the relevant facts—those that have been regarded as supportive of materialism, those that have been regarded as supportive of dualism, and those that may count against both materialism and dualism.

P54 In short, the datum of freedom, like the data of the unity of experience
and the unity of our bodily behavior, favors dualism over materialism—or at least would if the problems of discontinuity and dualistic interaction could be ignored.
{oh, those little things? Pshaw! We obviously aren’t meant to understand them. (Yes, sarcasm)}

P59 6. A related problem for materialists, given the virtual necessity of their restricting perception to that which occurs through the physical sensory organs, is the impressive evidence for extrasensory perception, in the sense of telepathy and clairvoyance.
{impressive? Unreal, this guy.}
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Razinha | May 9, 2023 |
Boy oh boy! Scary! There are numerous issues from 9/11 that need to be addressed and never were. This book asks questions but there are no answers except to draw the conclusion that the Bush Administration was negligent or even behind 9/11. Aside from the I-beams begin cut and the buildings imploded there is the question of why Building 7 collapsed 7 hours after the planes hit. The 9/11 commission report doesn't even mention the collapse of this building. Also the fact that cell phones don't work from 30000 feet in the air. The book talks about the technology is available to change voices to match known people.... The main problem with this book is only that if it is true, it is a horrible thought to consider, therefore no one is talking about it.… (mer)
 
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camplakejewel | 1 annan recension | Sep 16, 2017 |
Dr. Griffin's work on 9/11 is brilliant as well as courageous. His first book on 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor (2004), is an excellent, comprehensive introduction to the questions posed by the US government's 'official story' about 9/11. Dr. Griffin applies rigorous standards of scholarship in all of his work and seldom, if ever, theorizes. He lays out evidence, leaving others to try to resolve and explain it.

But I had trouble with 9/11 Contradictions. First, it is NOT a good introduction to 9/11 questions, mostly because of its intense focus. It defines the contradictions between the 9/11 Commission report and other reports very precisely, indeed so precisely that new readers could find its arguments pedantic and even trivial. One must understand the context in which these questions arise, and context is absent from this book.

Indeed, I have a few faults to find with the book, most of which, I believe, are the result of its narrow focus and, perhaps, insufficient editing. Repetition is useful in making strong arguments, but I believe that it's overdone here. Dr. Griffin could have made his points in about half the space. Also, I question whether the 9/11 Commission, as incredibly irresponsible as its report was, should be required to respond to 9/11 contradictions appearing in newspaper accounts and on TV shows, as Dr. Griffin maintains. Finally, I do think that a very few of his arguments ARE trivial, in the greater scheme of things.

In the past, he has set forth 9/11 issues in an elegant and unimpeachable manner. This book is a useful tool for 9/11 researchers (and I WOULD like to see Congress and the press investigate these contradictions). But please read The New Pearl Harbor if you need or want context.
… (mer)
 
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KarenRice | 1 annan recension | Jul 4, 2009 |
This book is worth the cost just for Part II which discusses the political environment during the time of Jesus and introduces some of the concepts of process theology.
 
Flaggad
marain | 1 annan recension | May 21, 2009 |

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