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Studia Neoaristotelica

A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism

Volume 11

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Displaying: 1-13 of 13 documents


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1. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Dan Török Spor o svobodnou vůli mezi Erasmem Rotterdamským a Martinem Lutherem
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In my paper I try to reconstruct the core of Martin Luther’s and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s view on the question of free will on the basis of my analysis of Erasmus’ treatise De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio (1524) and Luther’s answer De servo arbitrio (1525). I also examine the compatibility of their views, or rather the main reasons for their incompatibility. I analyse the problematic and adversarial moments of both of the great thinkers views, which I fi nd in the case of Martin Luther for example in the idea of all-doing God and in the view on the creation of the fi rst human, Adam; and in the case of Erasmus of Rotterdam for example in the question of merits and in the assertion that a spreading of the truth might be scandalous. Before presenting my conclusions I also deal with the diff erences in applied terminology and methodology of these two reform thinkers, which leads me to the question of the criterion of the truth. On the basis of these observationsI search for the key reasons for the disagreement between the two protagonists of this dispute and I evaluate the whole debate.
2. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Lukáš Novák Můžeme mluvit o tom, co není?: Aktualismus a possibilismus v analytické filosofii a ve scholastice
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The aim of the article is twofold: (i) to document how what the author labels the “Principle of Reference” – viz. the claim that that which is not cannot be referred to – inspires both actualist and possibilist philosophical conceptions in the analytic tradition as well as in scholasticism, and (ii) to show how Duns Scotus’s rejection of the Principle allows us to see that there are two distinct and logically independent meanings of the actualism–possibilism distinction: viz. metaphysical actualism/…possibilism, and semantic actualism/possibilism. By way of an appendix, the author off ers some critical remarks on recent Czecho-Slovak debates about the ontological status of non-existents.
3. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Miroslav Hanke Paradox lháře ve světle scholastických klasifikací
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The systematic focus of twentieth century logic and analytic philosophy on semantic paradoxes prompted the rediscovery of the nearly six hundred years of scholastic research devoted to paradoxes. The present paper focuses on the following three branches of scholastic logic: 1. definitions of semantic paradox; 2. basic strategies of solving paradoxes; 3. scholastic classifications of solutions to paradoxes. Scholastic logicians analysed paradoxes from threebasic points of view: the point of view of paradox-generating inferences, the point of view of paradoxical sentence, and the point of view of the theoretical context of paradoxes. These partial analyses can be synthesised into a coherent approach, allowing for analysing different aspects of semantic paradox.
zprávy
4. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Týždeň etiky 2014 v Košiciach
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articles
5. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Dale Jacquette Toward a Neoaristotelian Inherence Philosophy of Mathematical Entities
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The fundamental idea of a Neoaristotelian inherence ontology of mathematical entities parallels that of an Aristotelian approach to the ontology of universals. It is proposed that mathematical objects are nominalizations especially of dimensional and related structural properties that inhere as formal species and hence as secondary substances of Aristotelian primary substances in the actual world of existent physical spatiotemporal entities. The approach makes it straightforward to understand the distinction between pure and applied mathematics, and the otherwise enigmatic success of applied mathematics in the natural sciences. It also raises an interesting set of challenges for conventional mathematics, and in particular for the ontic status of infinity, infinite sets and series, infinitesimals, and transfinite cardinalities. The final arbiter of all such questions on an Aristotelian inherentist account of the nature of mathematical entities are the requirements of practicing scientists for infinitary versus strictly finite mathematics in describing, explaining, predicting and retrodicting physical spatiotemporal phenomena. Following Quine, we classify all mathematics that falls outside of this sphere of applied scientific need as belonging to pure, and, with no prejudice or downplaying of its importance, ‘recreational’, mathematics. We consider a number of important problems in the philosophy of mathematics, and indicate how a Neoaristotelian inherence metaphysics of mathematical entities provides a plausible answer to Benacerraf’s metaphilosophical dilemma, pitting the semantics of mathematical truth conditions against the epistemic possibilities for justifying an abstract realist ontology of mathematical entities and truth conditions.
6. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Miguel García-Valdecasas Givens and Foundations in Aristotle’s Epistemology
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Aristotle’s epistemology has sometimes been associated with foundationalism, the theory according to which a small set of premise-beliefs that are deductively valid or inductively strong provide justification for many other truths. In contemporary terms, Aristotle’s foundationalism could be compared with what is sometimes called “classical foundationalism”. However, as I will show, the equivalent to basic beliefs in Aristotle’s epistemology are the so-called first principles or “axiómata”. These principles are self-evident, but not self-justificatory. They are not justified by their act of understanding, but by the arguments that satisfactorily prove them. In addition, these principles are intellectual, rather than perceptual, so that no basic belief that is about our immediate experience or sensorydata is apt to provide the required foundation of knowledge. In spite of this, I argue that Aristotle’s foundationalism has no givens, and that his epistemology resists the objections usually leveled against givens.
7. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Walter Redmond De ontologico logicae fundamine meditatio
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I wish to reflect briefly on what logic “is” and what the “is” is founded upon. Logic has traditionally been linked with argumentation. I shall examine a simple argument relative to a “miniworld”, and with the help of current logic and traditional ontology, extract from it a modest theory of logical entities and relations. “Current logic” involves modal semantics and the “traditional ontology” is that of Plato, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, and some later philosophers.
discussion articles
8. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Louis Groarke Response to “Hildebrand vs. Groarke” by Vlastimil Vohánka
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I defend an Aristotelian account of induction against an analytic challenge that recommends Bernoulllian satistics as a more rigorous foundation for inductive reasoning. If Aristotle defines metaphysical necessity as a causal relation produced by the form inherent in a substance, the modern Humean account construes metaphysical necessity as a matter of exceptionless statistical regularity. I argue that Humean epistemology cannot move beyond relations of ideas to a description of the true nature of things in the world and that Aristotelian realism offers, in comparison, a metaphysical perspective that can serve as a firm foundation for science. Any attempt to prove the validity of induction using mathematical probability is bound to fail for basic principles of all mathematics begin ininduction. Any such strategy is viciously circular. In the course of the paper, I argue that logic must begin in an immediate leap of reason, that intuitive insights can be tested in hindsight, that metaphysical essentialism can account for the accidental (or contingent) properties of things, and that phenomenological distinctions between metaphysical, natural, and empirical necessity can be mapped onto Aristotelian categories.
articles
9. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
John A. Demetracopoulos Purchotius Græcus II: Vikentios Damodos’ Concise Metaphysics, Part I (“Ontology”) And II (“Pneumatology”)
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Vikentios Damodos (1700–1754) was a private teacher of philosophy and theology in Cephalonia (Kephallênia), Ionian Islands (Greece), when they were under Venetian rule. He had studied in Venice and Padua and elaborated a Greek Concise Metaphysics, which forms a part of his hefty Philosophy. Concise Metaphysics is a selective translation or adaptation of passages from the respective parts of Institutiones philosophicæ by Edmond Pourchot, a Scholastico-Cartesian professor of philosophy (1651–1734); namely from Metaphysics of Vol. I (Logic and Metaphysics); as well as from the respective parts(Compendium Metaphysicæ; Exercitationes scholasticæ) of Vol. V (Exercitationes scholasticæ… sive Series disputationum ontologicarum or Exercitationes ontologicæ) of Pourchot’s textbook. Damodos’ work is enriched by an Appendix, which includes some Metaphysical Questions. Like Damodos’ Concise Ethics, where the respective parts of the same textbook were plagiarized, the main body (Part I: “Ontology”; Part II: “Pneumatology”, sc. on spiritual beings) of the Concise Metaphysics testifies to his good apprehension of the content of the Latin original. Yet too, it shows no traces of philosophical thought on the part of the plagiarist. Damodos modified the content of the Latin text only with regard to Filioque and Trinitarian terminology, which was not acceptable to himself and his fellow Orthodox addressees. Damodos seems further to have been aware of the issue of whether theological topics (such as those regarding angels, which, as ‘spiritualbeings’, fall under the subject matter of metaphysics) should be admitted into metaphysical handbooks. He shares Pourchot’s view that this is in principle forbidden, although it can be accepted for practical reasons, just as another Scholastico-Cartesian, Jean-Baptiste du Hamel (1624–1706) had done in his own Metaphysics. Du Hamel, in his turn, had been a latent yet basic source of Pourchot’s Institutiones philosophicæ. Damodos enriched his own handbook by means of some additional material (e.g., on the various sorts of metaphysical ‘distinctions’), which he drew from du Hamel’s Logic and Metaphysics (from the Philosophia vetus et nova) and, probably, from the metaphysical part of the handbook of Thomistic philosophy by Antonius Goudinus (1639–1695).
10. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Jan Palkoska Inesse and Concipi in Spinoza’s Ethics
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In this paper I examine the prospects of the two major approaches to interpreting the ‘inesse’ relation in Spinoza’s definitions of substance and mode in the Ethics – the ‘inherence’ interpretation and the ‘causal’ interpretation. I argue that these interpretations will find it difficult to reconcile the claim that modes ‘are in’ substance with the claim that modes are conceived through substance. I consider a number of strategies that proponents of these readings might use to overcome the problem, and conclude that none is satisfactory.
11. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Vlastimil Vohánka Are Standard Lawlike Propositions Metaphysically Necessary? Hildebrand vs. Groarke
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I discuss Dietrich von Hildebrand, a realist phenomenologist, and Louis Groarke, an Aristotelian. They are close in epistemology and modal metaphysics, but divided about the metaphysical necessity of standard lawlike propositions – i.e., standard natural laws and standard truths about natural kinds. I extract and undermine the reasons of both authors. Hildebrand claims that no standard lawlike proposition is metaphysically necessary, since none is in principle knowable solely by considering essences. I undermine this when I argue that the explanation of positive instances of at least some standard lawlike propositions by the metaphysical necessity of these propositions is quite plausibly (though not probably) true. Groarke claims that some standard lawlike propositions are metaphysically necessary, since their positive instances exemplify natural kinds that make all their members necessarily similar in relevant ways. I undermine this, too, as I point out the obscurity of relevant similarity. Finally I argue against Groarke’s suggestion that an appeal to relevant similarity is presupposed in all acceptable inductive arguments from samples.
notes & discussions
12. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
John Peterson Creation and Consciousness
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Defenders of the evolutionary origin of human beings hold that humankind has in its entirety evolved out of lower life forms. This opposes the idea of creation under which at least one aspect of human beings has not evolved out of pre-existing material things or states of thing but has been produced out of nothing by God. It is here argued that creation is correct. For whatever might be said of other aspects or elements in our natures, our consciousness, taken per se or just as consciousness, is something which could not possibly have evolved out of pre-existing things or states of thing. That is because consciousness is ultimately simple and only what is composite can come to be by evolution out of pre-existing things or states of thing.
reviews
13. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Ulrich G. Leinsle Physica Sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit by Bernd Roling
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