tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2660668851365225517.post6724150523741224383..comments2023-05-12T00:53:59.969-07:00Comments on Arrow Through the Sun: Responding to Barfield, Part 1: Pre-History Never HappenedBen McFarlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08364608981370156708noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2660668851365225517.post-49578195702066072502012-04-27T02:57:19.726-07:002012-04-27T02:57:19.726-07:00I've only tonight discovered your blog, but I&...I've only tonight discovered your blog, but I've really enjoyed your engagement with Barfield here. I might be willing to call myself Barfieldian, depending on my mood. <br /><br />Just thought I'd stop by to drop off a link to some relevant thinking over on my blog: http://footnotes2plato.com/2011/05/05/towards-a-christological-realism-thinking-the-correlation-with-teilhard-and-barfield/Matt D Segallhttp://www.footnotes2plato.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2660668851365225517.post-83302735555626414722012-01-22T15:26:50.844-08:002012-01-22T15:26:50.844-08:00For the record, Barfield presents and then rejects...For the record, Barfield presents and then rejects Berkeley's view: "This involves the, for me, too difficult corrolary that, out of all the wide variety of collective representations which are found even to-day over the face of the earth, and the still wider variety which history unrolls before us, God has chosen for His delight the particular set shared by Western man in the last few centuries."<br /><br />There's some good quotes to come about how science has been good for scouring the old idols (e.g., ancient Greek gods and spirits) from nature, but Barfield would say now we need to take what we know from science and move forward, consciously putting things together in a way that we used to unconsciously. It's really important to note that this is not a rejection of science or the fact that it is a very good model of reality. Barfield's point is simply that reality must always be more than the scientific model of it, and that the observer must participate in it. This actually goes well with quantum phenomena in physics like Bell's inequality and the confluence of time and space in the four-dimensional models of general relativity. Too much for a comment obviously ...Ben McFarlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08364608981370156708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2660668851365225517.post-11882291961143616522012-01-22T14:12:07.475-08:002012-01-22T14:12:07.475-08:00Intriguingly, the word to type for comment verific...Intriguingly, the word to type for comment verification with this post was 'death'.<br /><br />But, to my point: this is, of course, a perennial question in all of philosophy, not just philosophy of science. It is the question of whether the 'world' can be said to have 'existence' without any conscious subject there to conceptualize that world's existence. I think most philosophers today would reject the radical anti-realist view of someone like Berkeley (i.e. when you leave the room, the room doesn't exist anymore). Ok, maybe that's a bit unfair to Berkeley. But anyway...<br /><br />It seems that the most commonly accepted view is that while, yes, the world as we conceptualize it today can't be precisely the world that existed four billion years ago, it seems reasonable to say that *some* kind of world existed. The question then becomes, are we exercising this question in futility? That is, as much as I agree with Barfield's point, at what point should we also simply admit that a world *something* like what we can conceptualize must have existed, so it does us little good to privilege the kind of anti-realist view Barfield proposes, practically speaking.Geoffhttp://gdargan.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.com