A Treasure To Be Shared

One of the more intriguing developments in recent philosophy of religion, and the topic of more than a few online commentators, is the “psychophysical harmony” argument advanced by Brian Cutter and Dustin Crummett of Notre Dame University, Indiana. It is a design‑style argument, but not of the familiar biological or cosmological sort. Instead, it turns our attention inward—toward the structure of conscious experience itself—and asks why our phenomenal lives fit so uncannily well with the physical and behavioral lives we lead. The phenomenal realm and the physical-behavioral realm. Human beings inhabit two domains at once. There is 1) the phenomenal realm: what pain feels like, what hunger feels like, what the color red looks like, what fear or joy or longing is “from the inside.” And there is 2) the physical-behavioral realm: the bodily motions, neural firings, and environmental interactions that make up our lives as organisms. In our world the two realms are exquisitely aligned. Pain ...

In Catholic theology, the human soul is understood as the spiritual principle that constitutes the deepest identity of the human person . It is not an optional or secondary feature but the very form of the body, the source of life, consciousness, and freedom. Catholic teaching, drawing from Scripture, the Fathers, and the scholastic tradition, presents the soul as spiritual, immortal, and created immediately by God, revealing the dignity and destiny of every human being. The soul’s spiritual nature means that it is not composed of matter and therefore transcends the limitations of the physical world. This teaching is rooted in the biblical affirmation that humanity is created “in the image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26), a likeness that cannot be reduced to bodily form. The spiritual soul enables the human person to engage in acts that surpass material causality—intellect, free will, moral judgment, and the capacity for communion with God. As St. Thomas Aquinas argues, the soul’s ...

Observations Human dignity stands as one of the most enduring pillars of moral and political philosophy. It asserts that every person possesses an intrinsic worth that precedes all social arrangements, legal systems, and cultural norms. This worth is not granted by the state, nor earned through achievement; it is inherent, rooted in the very fact of being human. To affirm dignity is to recognize that each person is a moral subject — capable of reason, freedom, and responsibility — and therefore must never be reduced to a mere instrument of another’s will. Dignity does not exist in isolation. It unfolds within the fabric of community, where individuals live, act, and pursue their flourishing. This is where the common good enters philosophical discourse. The common good is not the sum of private interests nor the triumph of collective power over the individual. Rather, it is the set of social conditions that allow persons — as individuals and as members of communities — to realize their ...

Was there a shift in how humans understand themselves, their place in the world, and their relationship to the divine or the transcendent? Axial Age is a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BC.  According to Jaspers, during this period, universalizing modes of thought appeared in Persia, India, China, the Levant, and the Greco-Roman world, in a striking parallel development, without any obvious admixture between these disparate cultures. - Wikipedia Ancient Greece: philosophers like Thales questioned the nature of reality, while Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle developed ethical and metaphysical systems. Ancient Israel: the development of monotheism, with Yahweh as a transcendent creator God, and a focus on ethical conduct and individual relationship with God. Ancient India: the rise of Hinduism with its emphasis on karma, reb...

? doubter, agnostic ! zealot If the '?', then seek the grace to overcome doubts. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! Mark 9:24 Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Saint John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua If the '!', then seek the grace of humility to serve God at all times for the salvation of souls. The zealot loves Tradition, but if does not possess love, he is but a noisy gong (1 Corinthians 13:1). The zealot is always " prepared to make a defense to any one who calls (him) to account for the hope that is in (him), yet does it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15). If zealots are prone to any kind of excess, zealots can be prone to a form of toxic enthusiasm. That is, they might make a defense of something by denigrating the opposition. It may be true that the opposition falls short on a particular issue, but rarely do people win others to a cause by promoting themselves at the expense of another's reputation. To make a proper defen...

Please note: excerpts rarely do justice to the intelligent exchanges of partners in discussions. Take the time to review the essays. - - - How to Reason Prudentially about Immigration: A Reply to Feser Dr. Therese Cory https://philosophy.nd.edu/people/faculty/therese-cory/ Source:  https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/04/97623/ Although Feser is right to emphasize the need for prudence, he relies on an essentially relativistic notion of prudence—one in which objective moral principles only get us so far, and the rest of the work is done by prudential judgment in a personal realm of mere “difference of opinion,” shielded from objective moral scrutiny. Feser’s Relativistic Portrayal of Prudence There is a puzzling disconnect between the beginning and end of Feser’s essay. Titled “A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws,” it opens by taking the position that “the administration’s restrictive immigration policy” is “on much stronger ground” vis-à-vis Catholic social teachin...

MICHAEL KUREK, COMPOSER MY AESTHETIC PHILOSOPHY https://michaelkurek.com/ Excerpt We are on life’s journey and seem to be wired to desire a series of goals, even a spiritual purpose. Likewise, we are endlessly engaged by the elements of drama in a narrative: Exposition, Inciting incidents, Rising action, Climax, Falling action, and Resolution. Storytelling has always been, and will arguably always be, universal in all cultures. Conversely, music that sounds random, unpredictable, with little or no feeling of narrative or goal, for me, symbolizes aimlessness and purposelessness or even nihilism in life . However, I am not talking about doing a skillful forgery of Bach or Chopin, which would of course sound derivative. I am talking about the same process used by the great composers, an assimilation and synthesis of many influences to create a uniquely personal voice. I believe you do have to somehow tell your story in your own “uniquely personal voice,” that is, through your own eyes, ju...

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary. Unless we love the truth we cannot know it. Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves. We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience. Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God. God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it. Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it. The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing. God instituted prayer to communicate to creatures the dignity of causality. Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hy...

The Sacrifice of Elijah Before the Priests of Baal c.1621-22 | Domenico Fetti God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity ... down to the very roots and sea-bed of the nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. - C. S. Lewis The first role of Catholic philosophers is to articulate the Catholic faith (or, better, Catholic wisdom) in a comprehensive, systematic, and intellectually rigorous manner and to transmit this articulation at appropriate levels of sophistication to other members of the Church--especially, but not only, to those who themselves aspire to be Catholic philosophical inquirers. [...] The second role of Catholic philosophers is to engage non-believing philosophers in intellectual exchanges, and to do so with charity, courage, and integrity, both in order to learn and in order to teach.(15) This claim, taken generally and in the abstract, is ...