Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Exploring Monism in Kantian Philosophy and Schopenhauer’s Will Through Advaita Vedanta     This blog post explores monism within Kantian philosophy and Schopenhauer’s concept of the “Will” through drawing parallels with Advaita Vedanta, a school of thought in Hinduism, as the title suggests. In Kant's philosophy, the noumena, or the “thing-in-itself” represents the ultimate reality of objects independent of our perceptions. Kant argued that we can never have direct knowledge of the noumenal realm because our knowledge is necessarily mediated by the structure of our minds and senses. This is explored much more in-depth in my other blog posts on the basics of Kant. While we can perceive and understand phenomena—how things appear to us—the nature of the noumena remains inaccessible. Kant posited that our experiences are shaped by the 12 categories of the understanding and the forms of intuition, and these mental structures impose limitations on what we can know about the underlying

Trinitarian Dynamics: Exploring Divine Processions and Relations in Thomistic Theology     Under a Thomistic interpretation of Christianity, God the Father is the one who possesses the divine essence in an absolute sense such that he is unbegotten. Before all ages he has always been and will be an eternal act of communicating the divine essence out. Imagine having an idea about yourself, this idea is like you but it will not be exactly you due to human limitations of imagination and therefore, will not be a perfect image. However, God knows himself perfectly and he is the only thing that can possibly understand his own essence. In his act of understanding himself it will be a perfect image with the same essence as it will be identical as it will be a reflection of his essence. Therefore, the Son proceeds by way of knowing. Knowledge is a procession. The reason why it becomes a person is because it is the perfect image of the divine essence.          “Thus can also be explained how &quo

William Lane Craig’s Refutation of the Worst Objections against the Kalam Cosmological Argument     In this blog post, we delve into the Kalam Cosmological Argument, an argument for the existence of God championed by Dr. William Lane Craig. This blog post will both present what Dr. Craig considers to be the worst objections to the argument and refute them. While he refutes 10 arguments, I will only present 3 since I believe the other 7 are too erroneous to even entertain. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is as follows: P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause P2. The universe began to exist C. Therefore, the universe has a cause.   The first objection I would like to present is: 1. The argument commits the fallacy of equivocation. In the first premise “cause” refers to a “material cause”, while in the conclusion it does not. An example of the fallacy of equivocation is as follows: 1. Greek is a language 2. Socrates is Greek 3. Therefore, Socrates is a language. Crai

Reviving Monotheism: Exploring Tensions within Monarchical Trinitarianism     According to Monarchical Trinitarianism, the Father’s existence is fundamental while the Son and the Spirit have a derivative status as the Father grounds their existence yet they share the same essence such that they exemplify what it takes to predicate divinity (excluding aseity it seems). Therefore, when they refer to there being only one God they are referring to the one fundamental divine person who is the Father while there are three divine persons and therefore “monotheistic” as they are defining monotheism as the existence or worship of one fundamental divine person. Therefore, in one sense there are three Gods as there are three divine persons but in another sense there is one God as there is one fundamental divine person. However, the Monarchical Trinitarian is equivocating on the term, “God”. To be God one must have all the qualities that are necessary and sufficient to be God. If there are three p

Has Truth Always Existed?              What is true are propositions and propositions abide in the mind. But this does not mean that objective truths require a mind as they are independent of it. Propositions in the mind correspond to objective facts. Objective facts are the truth-makers while propositions are the truth-bearers that represent objective facts. God grounds the propositions as He is the necessary being and all facts are contingent upon Him. If there was no God then there would be nothing to ground truth. If this was the case then truth would begin when the first mind comes into being. Then how does one explain necessary truths like the law of noncontradiction or excluded middle? If there was an eternal mind to ground these truths then these laws would always be true. In other words, if the truth-bearers are propositions and propositions are grounded by minds and if minds have not always existed then truth is not always eternal and therefore not necessary.   P1: All trut

Notes on Immanuel Kant Part 3              Kant attempted to synthesize the rationalist and empiricist tradition since he said that Hume had awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Rationalists like Descartes and Ibn Sina believed that there is knowledge that is a priori or independent from experience while empiricists like Hume and Locke believed the opposite. Hume was critical of the traditional notion of causation, arguing that the belief in cause and effect is not grounded in reason but rather in custom and habit. He argued that there is nothing in the cause that necessitates the occurrence of the effect. In other words, one may observe one event regularly following another, but there is no inherent connection or power in the cause that compels the effect to happen. A rationalist, on the other hand, would contend that knowledge of cause and effect is, at least in part, a priori—that is, independent of experience. Kant argued that while experience is necessary to shape our under