Post by Syphax on Mar 20, 2012 15:08:23 GMT -5
Hi everyone. I'd like to introduce myself on this board so you will know me better and know why I created this forum.
I post as "Syphax" instead of revealing my actual name. It's not some huge secret, but I'd rather make it more difficult to identify me online because I plan on a career as a psychology professor (tenure is harder to get in psychology if they think you're in any way an activist or apologist).
So right off the bat, I am not a philosopher, nor do I have any training in philosophy whatsoever. The only thing close to philosophy I've taken was a formal logic class, which was very difficult for me but I actually did well. I am interested in philosophy for two reasons.
One, I want to know 1) whether God exists, and 2) if so, what he wants me to do. I grew up in and still attend the LDS church. It has provided a lot of pragmatic spiritual balance in my life, and I owe a lot of my character and personality to that church. However, as I get older, I am beginning to part with the LDS conception of God and the LDS religion in general. I don't think it's evil, Satanic, occult, or crazy like many people, in fact I think it's a generally good religion with a lot of good people in it, but I am finding it less and less plausible as a source of metaphysical truth. As such, I went through a bit of a crisis a couple years ago trying to find out what I believe and whether God even exists at all. This is when I got into philosophy and discovered William Lane Craig. I learned a lot from Craig - mostly that faith could be reasonably defended - and he has restored my faith in the Christian religion. However, his conception of God does not fully resonate with me. This is when I encountered "classical theism" in the way of Aquinas, and this is the conception of God that does resonate with me. I am interested in exploring these things more fully.
Two, as a psychologist I am very interested in consciousness. Psychology seems to side-step the issue of consciousness these days and gets more into the pragmatic and applied side of the field. However, I think this leads to major philosophical problems that are obvious to anyone who looks deeply enough into the issues. William James (a personal favorite), Tichener, Wundt, and others in the 1800s were aware of and grappled with philosophical issues of psychology, but by the time we got to Watson, Freud, and Skinner, it seems philosophy had been abandoned for the crudest form of materialism. As you all know, Aquinas and Aristotle have a lot to offer the modern psychologist by way of helping explain some of the "mysteries" of consciousness, and I think one of my life's goals is to understand Aristotelian metaphysics enough to build a usable model/vocabulary for use in the psychological profession (instead of the dominant materialism). Not sure that can be done, partly because I am not very good with philosophical things, and partly because of the politics in psychology right now (they are very antagonistic towards non-materialism and religion too). Hence also my pseudonym.
That is my story. Hope to meet lots of brilliant people on this forum.
I post as "Syphax" instead of revealing my actual name. It's not some huge secret, but I'd rather make it more difficult to identify me online because I plan on a career as a psychology professor (tenure is harder to get in psychology if they think you're in any way an activist or apologist).
So right off the bat, I am not a philosopher, nor do I have any training in philosophy whatsoever. The only thing close to philosophy I've taken was a formal logic class, which was very difficult for me but I actually did well. I am interested in philosophy for two reasons.
One, I want to know 1) whether God exists, and 2) if so, what he wants me to do. I grew up in and still attend the LDS church. It has provided a lot of pragmatic spiritual balance in my life, and I owe a lot of my character and personality to that church. However, as I get older, I am beginning to part with the LDS conception of God and the LDS religion in general. I don't think it's evil, Satanic, occult, or crazy like many people, in fact I think it's a generally good religion with a lot of good people in it, but I am finding it less and less plausible as a source of metaphysical truth. As such, I went through a bit of a crisis a couple years ago trying to find out what I believe and whether God even exists at all. This is when I got into philosophy and discovered William Lane Craig. I learned a lot from Craig - mostly that faith could be reasonably defended - and he has restored my faith in the Christian religion. However, his conception of God does not fully resonate with me. This is when I encountered "classical theism" in the way of Aquinas, and this is the conception of God that does resonate with me. I am interested in exploring these things more fully.
Two, as a psychologist I am very interested in consciousness. Psychology seems to side-step the issue of consciousness these days and gets more into the pragmatic and applied side of the field. However, I think this leads to major philosophical problems that are obvious to anyone who looks deeply enough into the issues. William James (a personal favorite), Tichener, Wundt, and others in the 1800s were aware of and grappled with philosophical issues of psychology, but by the time we got to Watson, Freud, and Skinner, it seems philosophy had been abandoned for the crudest form of materialism. As you all know, Aquinas and Aristotle have a lot to offer the modern psychologist by way of helping explain some of the "mysteries" of consciousness, and I think one of my life's goals is to understand Aristotelian metaphysics enough to build a usable model/vocabulary for use in the psychological profession (instead of the dominant materialism). Not sure that can be done, partly because I am not very good with philosophical things, and partly because of the politics in psychology right now (they are very antagonistic towards non-materialism and religion too). Hence also my pseudonym.
That is my story. Hope to meet lots of brilliant people on this forum.