I'm Going For My PhD
I have long thought about getting a terminal degree in philosophy, but while life circumstances haven't outright prevented it, they have made the pursuit seem rather impractical.
As many of you know, what I do for my livelihood has nothing to do with philosophy; I run an online fitness business, teaching people how to exercise with these strange implements called kettlebells.
How somebody who never went to school for anything fitness related wound up being an entrepreneur in the fitness space is another story entirely, but the point for now is that my philosophical efforts – all time I spend researching, writing, and podcasting – are not only not an economic advantage to me, but actually cost me a monthly small fortune, particularly in opportunity cost.
That’s fine. I love doing it. But it would have been near impossible for me to justify relocating my family of seven to pursue my PhD. Plus, I don’t really *need* it. I’ve already been researching and publishing and doing all the things I’ve wanted to do with philosophy, and I never had any intention of becoming a professor.
So, why am I now pursuing my PhD? Simply because – I just saw a Godfather meme on Facebook, so this is perfect – I was made an offer that I could not refuse, one that allows me to write my dissertation, defend it, and get on with my life. No relocation, no travel, just good old-fashioned research and argument crafting. Just what I love. With that said, I am very pleased to announce that I am officially a PhD researcher at GCAS College of Dublin, where my friend and co-host Jim Madden is pursuing another Master’s (yes, he had a lot to do with me applying to their PhD program).
Of interest to my readers and listeners might be the topic of my dissertation. Things are always subject to change of course, particularly since my projects tend to begin with a rather ambitious scope and narrow as various annoying obstacles are encountered, like not being able to resolve every major metaphysical issue in the history of philosophy in a single article, but here’s what I have so far for a working title:
The Absolutely Simple First Principle of Everything: Exploring the Theoretical Fruits of Divine Simplicity.
You probably could have guessed it. What else could I write a dissertation on if not divine simplicity?
This is a subject I have been researching furiously for about ten years, and I feel I have some important things to say about it. New things, too. For example, I already have under development a rather unique form of cosmological reasoning that arrives at divine simplicity entirely without the principle of sufficient reason. This is inspired by the thought of Barry Miller but is much more wide-reaching. My aim is to show how issues of “mutual simultaneous construction” inherent to constituent ontologies dealing with the notion of incomplete entities either result in everyday composite objects being contradictory structures or necessitate that their unity and existence are always and everywhere caused. From there, I insert some new ideas about why an infinite regress of this sort of causal series—borrowing from my recent article published in The Review of Metaphysics—is impossible, leading to an absolutely simple first principle of everything. Naturally, I defend such a constituent ontology as correct and necessary.
If am right about this argument, then the first theoretical fruit of the divine simplicity is thus revealed: It alone can answer the question of why any (contingent/composite) object exists. No other theory will do.
But then, just as I do in my book The Best Argument for God (though this investigation is substantially different but similar in methodology), I intend to gain further “confirmation” of this foundational theory by seeing how it resolves a host of issues in other disciplines, from meta-ethics (for example, avoiding Euthyphro dilemmas), to meta-epistemology (escaping skepticism), to philosophical anthropology (securing libertarian freedom), and more.
We’ll see how much of this actually makes the final cut. I have already laid down a substantial amount of words just defending the underlying constituent ontology and developing the cosmological argument that runs from it.
I have three years.
Pray for me, if you please,
- Pat
PS - I’ve still been playing a lot of guitar as well. In fact, my wife and I formed a new band called Poundcake. She sings, and I’m on guitar. We play a lot of Van Halen and AC/DC. We’ve already performed a few gigs and have several more planned in the Milwaukee area this summer.
Life is certainly busy, but we’re having a lot of fun.