Author Archives: Jeff Thayne
Go to www.ldsphilosopher.com for the new site
Go to www.ldsphilosopher.com for the new site.
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Aristotle’s Views on Law
Jeffrey Thayne In Plato, we saw a tension between two different accounts of law: one as an imperfect, man-made set of rules established for the purpose of peaceful coexistence, and the other as a divine order encoded into human law … Continue reading
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In Pursuit of Truth
The Persuasive Power of Science: Part 1 Jeffrey Thayne In our age, science has attained a respected status that has largely gone unchallenged. I suspect there are many good reasons for this. Clearly, we have many conveniences today that we … Continue reading
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The Purposes of Law
Philosophy of Law Notes: Part 2 Jeffrey Thayne Before we discuss Aristotle’s thoughts on law, we must consider for a moment the purpose of law. Robin Letwin, in her chapter on Aristotle, introduces two distinct views of law that she … Continue reading
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Plato’s Views on Law
Philosophy of Law Notes: Part 1 Jeffrey Thayne Last weekend, I posted notes from my philosophy of law class on this site. The post was quite lengthy, and I have decided to divide it into a series of shorter posts, … Continue reading
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I Know That I Am Nothing
Jeffrey Thayne Today, we hear a lot about the importance of self-confidence and self-esteem. Where does this concept originate? Well, sometimes we think poorly of ourselves. The oft-proposed solution is that we should think more highly of ourselves. I think … Continue reading
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Gravity Made It Happen
Jeffrey Thayne Physicists have noticed that things accelerate at a particular rate when falling towards the earth. After extensive observation, they discovered that the acceleration of falling objects could be generalized and approximated by this particular mathematical equation: M represents … Continue reading
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Brief Reflections on Secularism
Jeffrey Thayne There are many different uses of the term secular. Gawain Wells and Wesley Burr, for example, explain that “secularism is the belief that the answers to life are found through rational means—through the concrete, observable, and practical world … Continue reading
Filed under Education, Family, Gospel, Government, Law, Philosophy, Politics
Announcement: 17 September 2008
School has started, and reading assignments have piled up. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ll have many new ideas to write about as I study my course material. The bad news is that … Continue reading
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The Restoration of All Things
Jeffrey Thayne Many of us compartmentalize our lives in a way that would seem strange to scholars of past centuries. We talk about our religious lives and our academic lives as though they were two separate things, divided in a … Continue reading
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Meaningful Antecedents
Jeffrey Thayne Although agency and indeterminism are often equated in popular rhetoric, the two philosophical concepts are very different things. Indeterminism, as Williams defines it, is the philosophy that events have no antecedents, or in other words, that they are … Continue reading
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Needed or Enough?
Jeffrey Thayne This post may seem a little basic, but I believe that there are two terms that, if understood properly, may greatly help us understand how the doctrines of the Restoration may compare with the philosophies of the world. … Continue reading
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Announcement: 29 August 2008
This week, I’ve been moving into a new apartment and straightening my fall class schedule. Nathan has also been moving. Therefore, we sadly do not have anything to present today. However, on Wednesday we posted our 50th article on this … Continue reading
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A War for Chance?
Jeffrey Thayne Agency is arguably one of the most crucial doctrines of the restored gospel. Richard Williams, in his paper “The Freedom and Determinism of Agency,” claimed that “there is a good case to be made for the centrality of … Continue reading
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Pruning the Branch We’re Standing On
Jeffrey Thayne Science often parades itself as the search for truth, or the the search for an understanding of what is actually going on in the world. In the pursuit of truth, science has largely adopted a philosophy known as … Continue reading
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Transcending Naturalism in Literature
Jeffrey Thayne Today, I would like to consider two different genres of fiction: fantasy and science fiction. The way in which I talk about them will probably be different than the way a literary expert would talk about them; I … Continue reading
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Challenging the Pleasure Principle
Jeffrey Thayne Nathan has been writing an excellent series on two very different paradigms of human intent; he has contrasted a fundamentally egoistic and self-interested theory of human behavior with a fundamentally relational, other-oriented theory of human behavior. Today, I … Continue reading
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Announcement: 10 August 2008
As our readers may have noticed, our goal to post three times a week is occasionally unattainable, especially as we move to the end of summer. However, we are dedicated to this blog and are strongly motivated to continue sharing … Continue reading
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The Treasure Cave of Mortal Thoughts
Jeffrey Thayne In recent posts, I have responded to the claim that God’s embodiment limits or constrains God’s power over the material world in some important way. I believe that the idea that God must be incorporeal to have perfect … Continue reading
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Hellenized Mormonism
Jeffrey Thayne I have no desire to dissuade anyone from reading this post, but the contents of this post are best understood when prefaced by my previous three posts (“The Greek and Hebrew Intellectual Traditions,” “Dynamic and Active Being,” and … Continue reading
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