I have to do a presentation on a couple of chapters for a doctoral Philosophy Colloquium tomorrow and, frankly, I just can’t stomach most of it.
What follows is pulled verbatim from one of the chapters (on the argument for God’s existence from the reality of consciousness). Now the argument is worth thinking through, but nobody will ever think it through when it is written in the highly technical manner that philosophers seem so enamored with. Here’s the direct quote:
“By contrast, a personal explanation (divine or otherwise) of some basic result R brought about intentionally by person P where this bringing about of R is a basic action A will cite the intention I of P that R occur and the basic power B that P exercised to bring about R. P, I, and B provide a personal explanation of R: agent P brought about R by exercising power B in order to realize intention I as an irreducibly teleological goal.”
I’m not kidding. That’s straight out of the book, and illustrates why I hate technical philosophy and see little real use for it.