This article explores the tension between the antithetical philosophies of empiricism and innatism underlying Chomskyan linguistics. It first follows the trail of empiricism in North American linguistics, starting from the work of Leonard Bloomfield at the beginning of the Twentieth century, and its influence on the Chomskyan paradigm, after which the Kantian trail of innatism initiated by Chomsky himself is reconnoitered. It is argued that the Chomskyan approach to natural language represents a paradigmatic example of the unsavory consequences of the divorce between mind and matter instituted by Kant, in particular because human language involves an intimate relation between both types of reality. In Chomsky’s Generative Grammar, on the other hand, the material side of language is treated as completely autonomous from its mental correlate and analyzed in terms of a priori conceptual structures and computational operations; for its part, the mental side of language is treated as innate; the relation between the two is thus made utterly obscure and incomprehensible. The conclusion of the article argues in favour of a more balanced approach inspired by Aristotelianism and Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics.

From the literature on Schopenhauer, it seems that he suggested only three ways of life to contend with the Will. I argue for a fourth, which is intended for the common person. A way that Schopenhauer himself lived by. The fourth way of life is derived from a broader reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, that is, reading his philosophy as ways of life. The other three ways relate to the three plains on which life enfolds: relations between the individual and objects, the relations between the individual and other individuals, and the relations between the individual and herself. The fourth way involves all three.

My purpose here is to focus on an aspect of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy which has not yet been fully explored, namely the way in which his insights border on being as much aesthetic as they are philosophical. I am suggesting that his work can be seen as an effort to redirect our attention away from the usual issues of linguistic philosophy and towards a broader perspective on the task of thinking about the nature of the relationship between language and the world. I shall draw briefly on the writings of J. L. Austin in order to amplify this perspective.

This paper argues that we care especially about human health because of what we are and because of how we function properly. First, an argument is made against a mechanistic and for a holistic account of human nature. Second, it is argued that humans function properly when they are disposed to deliberate and decide easily and accurately about the means of health, deem that unrestraint pleasure hinders health as well as that combated disease furthers health, and judge it right to will what health others are due.

This paper discusses Avicenna’s concept of ambiguity/analogy and argues that while Avicenna doesn’t mention it explicitly there is an analogy of the predication of being between creatures and God, the Necessary of Existence. A consequence of this analogical predication is that for Avicenna, like Aquinas, God does not fall under the subject of metaphysics common being or being qua being. If the predication were univocal as some scholars contend such as Timothy Noone and Olga Lizzini, then God would fall under the subject of metaphysics, common being as he does according to Ramon Guerrero and John Wippel. This paper has three parts. First, it discusses the comparison between Avicenna and Aristotle on pros hen equivocation/analogy. Second, it discusses the texts within Avicenna which suggest an analogical predication and which can reasonably be seen as establishing a transcendental predication between God and creatures. Finally, it develops the consequences of Avicenna’s view for the relationship between God and the subject of metaphysics common being or being qua being and argues that God does not fall under common being.

Basing itself on the cognitive theory of the modern Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan, the article conducts a critical appraisal of the notion of intuitive knowledge (ḥads in Arabic) as espoused by the famous medieval Islamic philosopher Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna). The article shows the ways in which Lonergan’s crucial distinction between the objectivity as the knower’s intelligent grasp of the real and the objectivity as the knower’s critical affirmation of the real, revises the epistemological primacy of intuitivism that is endemic not only to Avicennian thought in particular but also to Aristotelian tradition generally. At the same time, it shows various elements of continuity between Lonergan’s and Avicenna’s analyses of intentional consciousness. It argues that, while Lonergan’s thought revises Avicenna’s lack of attention to the role of one’s further rational affirmation of anything that one has gasped only intuitively, Lonergan’s cognitive theory might conceptually benefit from a number of original Avicennian insights when it comes to one’s experiential and intelligent grasp of the objects of one’s consciousness.

The argument rests on earlier work questioning the Russellian separation of levels and arguing that Russellian levels should be taken to include the levels of particle and aggregate, and generality and detail. That earlier work argues from the non-separation of particle and aggregate that predictability is limited and that physics cannot come to an end. This leads to a view of the world as flux. Identifiable objects demanding explanation can only be temporary entities emerging from flux and explanation can only be local and historical. This precludes explanation of totality and leads us to reject Leibniz’s question. Baldwin’s argument from possible worlds theory that a null world is possible is examined and questioned. Koon’s combination of the kalam argument with the grim reaper paradox is not queried but a way is found of circumventing it. It is noted in passing that the argument does not have the anti-theistic implications which may appear.

In this paper, I focus my attention on I and Thou as an important text in the philosophy of religion which goes beyond the traditional opposition of theism and atheism by proposing a different way of thinking about God and the nature of religious belief. I begin with a basic account of Buber’s position in Part One of I and Thou, and then I move on to the philosophy of God in Part Three which is built upon this initial discussion. In the rest of the paper, I examine some of the implications of Buber’s perspective for the meaning of “belief in God” and how this affects traditional theism and atheism. My sense is that I and Thou has been very influential, but in recent years it has been unfairly neglected. One of the goals of this paper is to show that I and Thou is still important, for as a singular text that transcends the ordinary boundaries of philosophy, theology, and literature it remains compelling and appeals to many who have different religious beliefs, as well as those who have none.

In a recent paper, Chunghyoung Lee argues that, because zygotes are developmentally plastic, they cannot be numerically identical to the singletons into which they develop, thereby undermining conceptionism. In this short paper, I respond to Lee. I argue, first, that, on the most popular theories of personal identity, zygotic plasticity does not undermine conceptionism, and, second, that, even overlooking this first issue, Lee’s plasticity argument is problematic. My goal in all of this is not to take a stand in the abortion debate, which I remain silent on here, but, rather, to push for the conclusion that transitivity fails when we are talking about numerical identity of non-abstract objects.

Thomists do not have an account of how modern mathematics relates to classical mathematics or more generally fits into the Aristotelian hierarchy of sciences. Rather than treat primarily of Aquinas’s theses on mathematical abstraction, I turn to considering what modern mathematics is in itself, seen from a broadly classical perspective. I argue that many modern quantities can be considered to be, not quantities as such or in themselves, but derived quantities, i.e., quantities that can be defined wholly in terms of the principles of number or magnitude. I also interpret the parts of modern mathematics that study quantitative change as being properly-speaking parts of natural philosophy, for example, probability theory, statistics, calculus, etc. In conclusion, I consider the place that quantity as such has in the order of the world and why we should expect the world to be highly mathematical, as we have found it to be.

Creationism is an important feature of Christianity but seems very foreign to Chinese philosophy. This paper examines an early attempt at introducing a metaphysical account of creationism in Huanyou quan (1628) by the Portuguese Jesuit, Francisco Furtado, and the Chinese scholar, Li Zhizao. It investigates the sources drawn from the works of Thomas Aquinas and reconstructs the choices made by the two authors in their translation. Finally, it suggests that Thomistic creationism bears similarities with Chinese philosophy.

Those who occupy positions of authority such as public officials and corporate executives frequently find themselves in contexts in which their choices can be expected to have consequences regarding the distribution of benefits and burdens among various stakeholders. How should such people reason in such contexts so as not to be biased? Herein I set forth and critically examine two answers to this question. The first is based on the work of John Rawls and is intuitively attractive. Nevertheless, I argue that there is reason to question its plausibility. The second is based on the work of John Finnis and is initially not intuitively attractive. Nevertheless, I develop a defense of it. If my defense of the second answer is plausible, what those who occupy positions of authority should do so as not to be biased when making choices in contexts of distributive choice is quite different than what is commonly supposed.

The aim of this paper is to show how systematic Charles Taylor’s philosophy is. It rejects two opposite readings: one claiming that Taylor’s thought is too diverse to have real unity; the other, that it is the product of a “monomaniac” (Taylor’s own word). I claim that his thought has a very distinct structure, comprising two levels. On the first, “meta-hermeneutic” level, Taylor defends a thesis about hermeneutics (namely, that it cannot be dispensed with): this unifies his anthropology, epistemology, moral philosophy, philosophy of language and political philosophy. On the second, “hermeneutic” level, Taylor builds an impressive historic construal of modern identity and its dilemmas. More importantly, while these two levels are irreducibly distinct, they relate to each other in interesting ways, giving Taylor’s philosophy its systematicity. I finally confront this view with other readings, and argue that it is the best way to understand Taylor’s work.

For a given decision, when an undemocratic procedure would result in a good outcome, and a democratic procedure would result in a bad outcome, which decision procedure ought we to use? Epistemic democrats, such as Joseph Schumpeter, argue that all else being equal, we should prefer the procedure with the good outcome. Schumpeter’s argument for this position is that we must reject the view that only democratic procedures matter when evaluating government institutions (pure proceduralism), and the only alternative to pure proceduralism that can coherently describe the relationship between democracy and the public interest is pure instrumentalism. I argue that Schumpeter’s argument for epistemic democracy does not succeed. In this paper, I outline three alternative ways of conceiving of the relationship between democracy and the public interest, which I call evaluative dualism, impure instrumentalism, and impure proceduralism. I explain how, with any of these three alternative views, we can evaluate government institutions without rejecting the intrinsic value of democratic procedures or the public interest.

In this essay, I discuss the essence of truth. In order to do so, I continue a fecund dialogue between Husserlian phenomenology, as recapitulated by Robert Sokolowski, and Aristotelian metaphysics, as developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Integrating these phil­osophical approaches enables us to see that beings reveal themselves to us through their activities, both substantial and accidental, and that the active self-disclosure of things can be identified with their intelligibility. It is this objective yet potential intelligibility that we disclose and activate when we think about things truthfully by articulating them in the medium of speech. I therefore define truth as the human person’s syntactic activation of the potential intelligibility of things, and I conclude by showing how these reflections lead us to acknowledge God as the highest and first Truth.

The purpose of this article is to provide a case against certain claims made by modal skeptics with a specific application to the debate about whether conceivability is the right notion to employ in justifying the move from some state of affairs being conceivable to its being metaphysically possible. Does conceivability provide adequate, defeasible grounds for inferring metaphysical possibility? If not, is there a better approach that employs a replacement for conceivability? I argue that conceivability should be abandoned in favor of rational intuitions understood in a way I hope to make clear and precise.To accomplish this purpose, I begin by examing the general way conceivability has been related to metaphysical possibility and opt for a replacement for conceivability. Next, I make clear and precise what I mean by that replacement—rational intuitions. Third, I present three representative accounts of modal knowledge offered by Timothy O’Connor, George Bealer, and Edmund Husserl. O’Connor’s account is externalist, Bealer’s is a hybrid between an internalist and externalist view, and Husserl’s is a purely internalist perspective. While all three are plausible perspectives, I will criticize and reject the first two accounts and argue that Husserl’s way out of modal skepticism is successful. I conclude that Husserl’s employment of rational intuition made precise by his notions of eidetic and categorial intuition, provides a rigorous, fruitful way to ground modal knowledge in general, and de re and de dicto possibility in particular.

In an earlier paper, Mark Spencer synthesized three understandings of divine simplicity, arguing that the Thomist account can be enriched by Scotist and Palamite distinctions. After summarizing that earlier work, this paper builds upon it in four main ways. Firstly, it relates Scotus’ logical (diminished) univocity to Aquinas’ metaphysical analogy in language about God. Secondly, it explores the limits of univocity and the formal distinction as applied to the divine essence (in the Palamite sense), utilising the scientific metaphor of tomography. Thirdly, it defends Palamite energies from the charge of being Thomistic accidents by introducing the concept of “intrinsic ramification” and applying that concept to the Thomistic divine ideas. Fourthly, it tabulates some significant pre-existing parallels between the three systems’ nomenclature in referring to similar aspects of the divine.