Nieuwe bijdrage voor DeBezieling

Mijn nieuwe bijdrage voor het forum De Bezieling is inmiddels aldaar online beschikbaar. Daarin benader ik de vraag naar het zijn van God vanuit Martin Heideggers zijnsdenken.

Nieuw artikel voor ANTW

Voor een binnenkort te verschijnen speciale editie van Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte over sciëntisme schreef ik op verzoek een artikel met als titel 'Sciëntisme en Metafysica'. Constructief commentaar is zoals altijd van harte welkom.

Lucy calling her mother

"[as the doctor starts to look at her stomach wound Lucy takes out her phone]
Lucy: Do you mind?
Doctor: No.
[Lucy calls her mother]
Lucy's Mother: Hello?
Lucy: Mom.
Lucy's Mother: Hey, Lucy. Baby, it's great to hear from you. But what time is it over there?
Lucy: I don't know, it's night.
Lucy's Mother: old on a sec, let me get rid of the other line.
[at the same time the doctor whispers to her]
Doctor: I'm going to have to go inside.
[Lucy nods her head and the doctor gets ready to operate on her]
Lucy's Mother: I'm back. You're not partying too much, are you? You promised me you'd look after yourself.
Lucy: I'm trying to, Mom. I am trying to.
Lucy's Mother: Well, thanks for calling out of the blue like this. Your father is gonna be sad he missed you. He isn't home from the gym yet. Usually you call us in the morning.
Lucy: Mom?
Lucy's Mother: Yes.
Lucy: I feel everything.
Lucy's Mother: What do you mean, sweetie?
Lucy: Space. The air. The vibrations. The people. I can feel the gravity. I can feel the rotation of the earth. The heat leaving my body. The blood in my veins. I can feel my brain. The deepest parts of my memory.
Lucy's Mother: Sweetie, we have a bad connection. I can't hear you so well. What did you say about memory?
Lucy: The pain in my mouth when I had braces. I...I can remember the feeling of your hand on my forehead when I ran a fever. I remember stroking the cat, it was so soft.
Lucy's Mother: The cat? What cat, honey?
Lucy: That Siamese with blue eyes and a broken tail.
Lucy's Mother: Sweetie, you can't possibly remember that. You were barely a year old.
Lucy: I remember the taste of your milk in my mouth. The room, the liquid.
Lucy's Mother: Sweetie, what are you talking about?
Lucy: I just want to tell you that I love you, mom, and dad.
Lucy's Mother: Sweetie.
Lucy: And I want to thank you for the thousand kisses that I can still feel on my face. I love you, Mom.
Lucy's Mother: I love you too, sweetie.More than anything in the world.
[at the same time the doctor pulls out the bag of drug from her stomach and Lucy ends the call to her mother]"

Fragment from Lucy (2014)

Radio Swammerdam (2)

Afgelopen zondag was ik te gast in de speciale lustrumuitzending van het wetenschapsprogramma “Radio Swammerdam” op Amsterdam FM om te praten over de relatie tussen religie en wetenschap. De uitzending kan hier nageluisterd worden.

Defining atheism

Let P be a proposition and let A be an argument for P. That is to say, A is a collection of premises that together entail P. Clearly, P entails "Probably, P." But then A is an argument for "Probably, P" as well. Now, what about the other way around? Let B be an argument for "Probably, P." In that case B is also an argument for P. After all, if argument B provides us with a good reason to believe "Probably, P", then B provides us with a good reason to believe P as well.

Hence, on evidentialism, P and "Probably, P" are epistemically on par. Any argument for "Probably, P" is an argument for P and vice versa. Someone who believes "Probably, P" is thus also committed to P. And anyone believing P should believe "Probably, P" as well.

Consider the claim that God does not exist. Given the aforementioned atheism defined as the belief that God does probably not exist cannot be epistemically distinguished from atheism defined as the belief that God does not exist. For if there are no good arguments for atheism defined as the belief that God does not exist, then there are no good arguments for atheism defined as the belief that God probably does not exist either (and vice versa). Therefore, adding the qualifier 'probably' does nothing to the epistemic tenability of atheism.

Gedicht

ik ben nog niet af
mijn zwakke kleuren
zijn nog onomlijnd
nog niet verfijnd
en vaak ook raakte
ik gebroken als
versnipperd licht
op barstend glas
wie schept iets moois
uit wat ik ben en was

Arie van Nieuwkerk

In Defense of Correlationism

In his influential book After Finitude Quentin Meillassoux argues that post-Kantian correlationism, the idea that we can only access the correlation between thinking and being, and never being itself, is contradictory. For that he provides three original arguments, the argument from ancestrality, the argument from facticity and the argument from mathematization. In a new paper I argue that his arguments do not go through. Meillassoux did not break the correlationist circle. Correlationism stands unrefuted.