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1. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
About Our Contributors
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2. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Philip E. Devine Against Superkitten Ethics
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I here criticize the use of science-fiction examples in ethics, chiefly, though not solely, by defenders of abortion. We have no reliable intuitions concerning such examples—certainly nothing strong enough to set against the strong intuition that infanticide is virtually always wrong.
3. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Lawrence Moonan Re-tracing the Five Famous Ways of Summa theologiae I.2.3
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Aquinas’s Five Ways are not to be understood as demonstrative proofs, successful or not, for the existence of God. Rather, they provide a necessary step towards supplying licensable surrogates for the essential predications that cannot logically be drawn from the incomprehensible nature of God, yet would seem needed for the Summa’s declared genre of argued theology. (Predication secundum analogiam provides surrogates for non-relational accidental predications, likewise unavailable.) What Aquinas is proving in arguing deum esse in ST I.2.3 is not God’s actual existence (see ST I.3.4 ad 2) but an alternative interpretation of “God’s being something” where “God is something” is a placeholder for, say, “God is prime mover” or, more explicitly, for such (necessary) identities as “The prime mover is the necessitated necessitator,” an identity whose necessity depends at more than one place on the assumption of God’s existence from faith, not on demonstrative proof of God’s existence.
4. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Joe McCoy Re-examining Recollection: The Platonic Account of Learning
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The doctrine of recollection is one of the most controversial in the Platonic corpus, and much scholarship has been aimed at altering the doctrine to resolve its paradoxical features, many of which, I argue, are generated by a failure to appreciate the difference between memory (mneme) and the distinct capacity of recollection (anamnesis). In several of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates gives an account of how recollection functions in ordinary contexts, and thus provides a basis for showing how anamnesis may be employed to describe learning in general. The mystery of learning consists in the fact that one must possess someknowledge of the matter being investigated prior to learning about it, and thus learning may be aptly described as a remembrance of some knowledge previously forgotten. I argue that the recollection account was formulated, not to resolve this mystery, but rather to capture descriptively its essential features.
5. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Raymond D. Boisvert The Fall: Camus versus Sartre
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This essay reads Camus’s novel The Fall as a reductio ad absurdum for two major strands in Western intellectual culture, the hyper-Augustinian “we are all depraved” strand and, more decisively, what I call the “hyper-Sartrean” strand of existentialist humanism. Many commentators have identified Sartre as a target of Camus’s novel, but a detailed exploration of the critique is rarely undertaken. Examining Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism reveals an understanding of the human condition as involving a double disconnection: from nature and from other people. Camus’s protagonist is just such a doubly detached individual. With little subtlety, Camus depicts his protagonist, as “Satanic,” i.e., the fallen one, the universal accuser, the friend of destruction, the enemy of connection. Such a “Fall” into self-isolation represents the all too alluring temptation against which Camus wishes to warn us.
6. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Andrew LaZella Siger of Brabant on Divine Providence and the Indeterminacy of Chance
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The compatibility of divine providence with the contingency of human freedom is widely-debated within medieval thought. Following recent works on the Islamicphilosopher Averroes, this essay expands the issue of causal indeterminism to include the less disputed question of contingency in the larger framework of chance. In tradition of Latin Averroism, Siger of Brabant provides a unique and heterodox perspective on the compatibility of chance with providence. Unlike his fellow scholastics who attempt to preserve contingency under the watchful gaze of divine providence, Siger rejects such moves as destructive of contingency. He instead argues for restrictions on the determination of such events by the arche of divine providence, thus leaving them anarchic with respect to its order but capable of introducing new beginnings in the otherwise closed universe of causes.
7. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Matthew D. Walz Stoicism as Anesthesia: Philosophy’s “Gentler Remedies” in Boethius’s Consolation
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Boethius first identifies Philosophy in the Consolation as his medica, his “healer” or “physician.” Over the course of the dialogue Philosophy exercises her medical art systematically. In the second book Philosophy first gives Boethius “gentler remedies” that are preparatory for the “sharper medicines” that she administers later. This article shows that, philosophically speaking, Philosophy’s “gentler remedies” amount to persuading Boethius toward Stoicism, which functions as an anesthetic for the more invasive philosophical surgery that she performs afterwards. Seeing this, however, requires understanding how Philosophy draws out Boethius’s spiritedness in the first book and how in the second book she sublimates it into an intellectual and volitional apathy toward the things of fortune, i.e., into a Stoic attitude toward that which is other. Significantly, though, the Stoicism to which Philosophy leads Boethius is of a mitigated sort, inasmuch as friendship is not included among the things of fortune to which Boethius is anesthesized, an exception that opens up Boethius to genuine wonder and, consequently, to genuine philosophizing.
book reviews and notices
8. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Jeffrey Flynn Cogent Science in Context
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9. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
John K. O’Connor Starting with Heidegger
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10. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Arthur Madigan, S.J. The Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle
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11. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Roland J. Teske, S.J. Faith Order Understanding: Natural Theology in the Augustinian Tradition
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12. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
John W. Peck, S.J. On Determining What There Is: The Identity of Ontological Categories in Aquinas, Scotus, and Lowe
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13. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Death and Donation: Rethinking Brain Death as a Means for Procuring Transplantable Organs
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14. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Gary Gabor Plato’s Republic: A Critical Guide
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15. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Books Received
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16. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 4
Annual Index
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articles
17. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 3
About Our Contributors
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18. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 3
Paul Symington Metaphysics Renewed: Kant’s Schematized Categories and the Possibility of Metaphysics
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This article considers the significance of Kant’s schematized categories in the Critique of Pure Reason for contemporary metaphysics. I present Kant’s understanding of the schematism and how it functions within his critique of the limits of pure reason. Then I argue that, although the true role of the schemata is a relatively late development in Kant’s thought, it is nevertheless a core notion, and the central task of the first Critique can be sufficiently articulated in the language of the schematism. A surprising result of Kant’s doctrine of the schematism is that a limited form of metaphysics is possible even within the parameters set out in the first Critique. To show this, I offer contrasting examples of legitimate and illegitimate forays into metaphysics in light of the condition of the schematized categories.
19. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 3
William Lane Craig Graham Oppy on the Kalam Cosmological Argument
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Graham Oppy has emerged as one of the kalam cosmological argument’s most formidable opponents. He rejects all four of the arguments drawn from metaphysics and physics for the second premiss that the universe began to exist. He also thinks that we have no good reason to accept the first premiss that everything that begins to exist has a cause. In this response, I hope to show that the kalam cosmological argument is, in fact, considerably stronger than Oppy claims, surviving even his trenchant critique.
20. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 51 > Issue: 3
Thomas W. Smythe, Michael Rectenwald Craig on God and Morality
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In this paper we critically evaluate an argument put forward by William Lane Craig for the existence of God based on the assumption that if there were no God, there could be no objective morality. Contrary to Craig, we show that there are some necessary moral truths and objective moral reasoning that holds up whether there is a God or not. We go on to argue that religious faith, when taken alone and without reason or evidence, actually risks undermining morality and is an unreliable source of moral truths. We recommend a viewpoint on morality that is based on reason and public consensus, that is compatible with science, and that cuts across the range of religious and non-religious positions.