Author: Harrison Dean

Interview w/ Peter van Inwagen: Annihilation Wands, Philosophy, Pluralism, The Bible, & More

On By Harrison DeanIn ChristianityLeave a comment

0:00 – Introduction
1:03 – Why did van Inwagen become a philosopher?
4:50 – Did he view arguments in a different light after conversion?
5:58 – John Hick’s work
7:45 – Hick’s challenge: the arbitrariness of religious exclusivity
11:05 – “The Church” vs. “Christianity”
14:14 – Quotes from John Hick & van Inwagen’s reaction
16:20 – “What does this all got to do with feelings anyway?”
18:40 – Hick on the Church’s Salvific claims
22:28 – Me Playing Devil’s Advocate
26:33 – “If I was born in Germany in 1920, I’d probably be a Nazi!”
28:31 – Open Theism
36:20 – Pastoral concerns about sovereignty and free will
40:45 – Philosophical disagreement
45:35 – Does philosophy establish or explain things?
52:25 – Fine Tuning
53:25 – Natural Theology, The God of the Philosopher vs. God of the Bible
57:48 – Problem of Evil & Ideal Agnostics
1:03:20 – Hell
1:09:11 – Annihilation wand
1:13:38 – Is it a problem that free will is a mystery?
1:17:10 – Abstract Objects
1:27:39 – The Inspiration of the Hebrew Bible & the Morality of God’s Commands
1:40:10 – Why couldn’t God give us a coherent revelation?
1:42:50 – Epistemic possibility
1:44:30 – Can we derive doctrine from the Old Testament?
1:49:50 – Is choosing hell irrational?

Is Tech Ruining Our Relationships? | Live Speech

On By Harrison DeanIn Ethics, VideosLeave a comment

This speech has issues, but I decided to post it to learn from my mistakes.

Here are my critiques:

Style:

      • The presentation was choppy. I could have practiced more to smooth it out.
      • Asking people to visualize multiple scenarios was probably too complicated. I should have replaced it with one mini-story or something similar.
      • I should have paused longer after asking people to choose their favorite scenario.
      • I used some filler words: um, like, etc.

      Content:

        I should have clarified that my claim is not that we should always give people in our presence our attention. It’s more like all else being equal we should give people in our presence attention instead of those we’re connected to digitally.

        A Domestic Thought Experiment

        On By Harrison DeanIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

        I’ve been thinking about how to promote good relations in households. This post is an exploration of one way to do this. 

        Consider households with multiple people: each member of the household has preferences, i.e. what they like and what they don’t. Most people have numerous preferences across many domains: dishes, noise, activities, cleanliness, etc. 

        Typically, we only know a fraction of our housemates’ preferences. But consider a hypothetical: suppose we had complete knowledge of our housemates’ preferences, would that be better or worse? 

        I think it would be better, here’s why: 

        1. A complete knowledge of everyone’s preferences would reduce unintentional annoyances. If I know my roommate hates shoes in the living room, I will try not to leave mine there. (Assuming I don’t have overriding, competing ends)
        1. Knowledge of each other’s preferences would help us love each other. If I know my roommate likes being asked how his day was, that knowledge will incline me to do that more often.  

        There are two potential downsides to this complete knowledge:  

        1. A complete knowledge of each other’s preferences would make it easier to annoy housemates. If I want to bug my roommate passive-aggressively, knowing he hates shoes in the living room gives me an easy opportunity.
        1. More knowledge might be offensive. I can imagine someone saying the following after learning his housemate hates it when he plays a certain song on the piano: “You hate that song I play on the piano? Well it’s my favorite song and I’ve spent dozens of hours practicing it. It’s insulting you don’t appreciate my efforts.”  That isn’t a rational response, but it could happen.   

        I don’t think those two would occur frequently and so I don’t give them much weight. 

        So if I’m right about all this, what’s the practical application? 

        Well, if it’s better to have complete knowledge of your housemates’ preferences, maybe we can approach that ideal. Perhaps it takes the form of group discussions where people share their preferences or something like that. It’s unlikely we’ll ever get to the point of being fully informed about each other’s desires, but as far as I’m concerned, the more the better.

        How to Age Well: Two Examples from Literature

        On By Harrison DeanIn LiteratureLeave a comment

        1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

        “Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parentheses that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age.”

        2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card:

        “Ender looked at her face, beginning to wrinkle enough that someone more critical than he might call her old. Still, there was laughter in her smile and a vigor in her eyes that made her seem much younger, even younger than Ender.”

        In his book The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard gives a Christian perspective on aging well and inner beauty:

        “Nature provides its own beauty to all of God’s creations. To try to be beautiful in terms of physical things never succeeds. And without the inner beauty of the soul, beauty is simply garish. “Like a gold ring in a pig’s nose,” the proverb says, “is a gorgeous woman who lacks sense.” (Prov. 11:22) Some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen are elderly people whose souls shine so brightly their bodies are hardly visible: Dorothy Day, Malcolm Muggeridge, Agnes Sanford, Golda Meir, Ethel Waters, and on and on. And this beauty is not just for old people. The natural beauty of the human being is given from… [God’s] kingdom to every person who will receive it.”