Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Partial causation and the efficacy of the mental

If the idea of a Manager of the Universe is to be powerful, then it is going to have to be efficacious through its effects on the minds of those who accept the existence of such a manager. In other words, any commitment to the Manager of the Universe being a powerful intentional object (and nothing "more" than an intentional object) is necessarily going to involve a commitment to mental causation and the mental having influence on physical events. Or, if it is not going to do this, then it will be incumbent upon one to say how beliefs and desires about the will of the Manager and about pleasing the Manager can make a difference in human action and not do so in virtue of their mental content.

In other words, the idea of the Manager exists and those whose belief in pleasing or otherwise interacting with the Manager makes a difference to what they do, require an accounting. Clearly the content seems to play a causal role and thus the content is at least a partial cause.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Defining Terms

The most difficult term I need to state my view that there is no single manager of the whole is "causes directly." I say this because direct causation of events is what it seems many traditions embrace and what lends potency and status to any candidate for manager.

Features of the manager: directly causes events that are clearly physical and clearly in space and time. Thus, appealing to the manager would be a way of changing future events, assuming that the appeal was accepted.

What does it take to establish the non-existence of the manager? The idea of the manager is real and does exist and does have power. However, this does not prove that there is direct causation since the reality is generated by the mere thought processes; these thought processes can be made more concrete by writing and various forms of image-making: in particular, music where the manager is the object of the songs; art where the manager is indirectly the object of the art; poetry and prose that purpose to be ABOUT the manager.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Introductory Entry

Thinking is no mean trick but with the pressure to do it often enough to justify readers visiting, maybe I will develop the habit of doing it.

Here is the basic orientation of this blog: what is, is; what is not, as a famous philosopher once said, we should pass over. I will do my best to focus on what has some sort of Being. Maybe not complete being but something close enough.