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21. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter Scientific Knowledge and the Metaphysics of Experience The Debate in Early Modern Aristotelianism
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Early modern commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics contain a lively debate on whether experience is ‘rational’, so that it may count as ‘proto-knowledge’, or whether experience is ‘non-rational’, so that experience must be regarded as a primarily perceptual process. If experience is just a repetitive apprehension of sensory contents, the connection of terms in a scientific proposition can be known without any experiential input, as the ‘non-rational’ Scotists state. ‘Rational’ Thomists believe that all principles of scientific knowledge must rely on experiential data, because experience consists in an apprehension of facts rather than objects. And it is only apprehension of facts that can justify knowledge of principles. In this context, the role of mathematical knowledge is special, because it is self-evident. So Thomists must either show that mathematical principles do rely on experience, or that they do not express knowledge claims.
22. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Mark K. Spencer Transcendental Order in Suárez
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Francisco Suárez’s account of the transcendentals in Disputationes Metaphysicae 3 has been noted by Aertsen, Courtine, Darge, and Sanz for its reductionism; Suárez argues that all proposed transcendentals reduce to unum, verum, and bonum. This scholarship overlooks a key feature of Suárez’s account. In addition to providing his own theory, Suárez also works out a meta-metaphysical framework with which it can be shown how any proposed metaphysical item, including those that do not fit into Suárez’s own theory, relates to Being; he also works out rules for ordering these items. The way in which Suárez orders and reduces items related to Being involves several different kinds of reduction, and is more complex than current interpretations allow. Suárez’s framework and rules providea neutral standard for assessing the truth of any theory of transcendentals; this is shown through examining four accounts of the proposed transcendental aliquid using Suárez’s framework and rules.
23. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Rescher Aristotle’s Precept on Precision
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As Aristotle saw it, the modus operandi of nature is frequently irregular and unruly. And this accords with the structure of the universe, with regularity predominant in the trans-lunar realm and regularity prominent in the cis-lunar. This circumstance opens the way to the different sorts of natural laws: those which are strictly universal and those which function only normally and “for the most part.” And knowing to what extent exactness, regularity, and universality can be expected in different areas of inquiry was, for Aristotle, the very touchstone of scientific wisdom and sophistication.
24. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Vlastimil Vohánka Why Peter van Inwagen Does Not Help in Showing the Logical Possibility of the Trinity
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I conceive the Trinity doctrine as the proposition that there are three persons each of whom is God but just one being (substance) which is God. In two papers by Peter van Inwagen I distinguish three potential candidates for a reason that the Trinity doctrine is logically possible. First, a particular conjunction entailing the Trinity doctrine is formally consistent in relative identity logic. Second, the conjunction is formally consistent in the standard logic. Third, the conjunction shares a form in relative identity logic with another logically possible conjunction. I explain how all these three reasons fail because of the distinction between logical possibility and formal consistency. In contrast to previous critiques, I dispense with epistemological and metaphysical assumptions about absolute and relative identity. Instead, I employ modal distinctions endorsed even by the inspirer of van Inwagen’s relative identity of the Trinity — the pioneering analytic scholastic Peter Geach.
25. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Ondřej Sikora Kant a metafyzika K reakci Stanislava Sousedíka na článek „K pozitivnímu významu Kantovy kritiky metafyziky“
26. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
David Peroutka OCD Inhabitace Boha v duši
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The New Testament testifies the fact of divine inhabitation in the soul. This raises the question of what philosophical means may be employed in order to explicate such a theological supposition. Irenaeus and Basil the Great seem to suggest that God is present in the soul as a form in a matter. Thomas Aquinas speaks of God in-existing in us as an efficient cause of our existence and of the grace. In accordance with the modern Thomists we may understand the God’s sanctifying inhabitation as an exemplar-efficient causality (the “form” of Basil has to be interpreted in the sense of “exemplar”). This causality does not constitute any new substantial divine presence in the soul. Rather we may conclude that the “old” substantial presence of God as the cause of our existence becomes also cause of our spiritual transformation operated according the “exemplar” of God.
27. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Jan Petříček Princip individuace podle Jana Dunse Scota
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This article deals with Duns Scotus’s solution of the problem of individuation, as it is presented in his Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle and, in particular, in the Ordinatio. In the first part of the article, an exposition of the way Scotus understood this problem is given. In the second section, Scotus’s arguments against alternative theories of individuation are summed up. The third part of the paper focuses on the characteristics and ontological status of the entity identified as the principle of individuation by Scotus himself, the “individual difference”; it is argued here in favour of the traditional view that the individual difference is a formal principle. Finally, in the conclusion of the article, two important features of Scotus’s approach to the problem of individuation are emphasized: namely, his insistence on the intelligibility and on the ontological dignity of the individual.
28. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Stanislav Sousedík K pozitivnímu významu Kantovy kritiky metafyziky Poznámka ke stejnojmennému příspěvku Ondřeje Sikory
29. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Ondřej Sikora K pozitivnímu významu Kantovy kritiky metafyziky
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The paper focuses on the positive aspects of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with respect to the question of metaphysics. Metaphysical value of Kant’s first Critique is not exhausted in its negative, refuting function, based on the conviction that all human knowledge requires empirical intuition. Neither is this value identical with the transcendental theory of conditions of empirical knowledge. The critique, as a specific kind of philosophical investigation, has metaphysical purpose in the traditional scholarly-Wolffian meaning of the word, dealing with the triad freedom, God and immoratality of the soul. The Critique of Pure Reason not only prepares room for this kind of metaphysics by eliminating the claims of pure speculative knowledge, it also shows the direction for its elaboration, which takes the form of rational faith. In this specific epistemic attitude, both theoretical and practical function of reason is employed.
30. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Prokop Sousedík Úvahy o filosofii a vědě
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The author divides his reflections on the nature of philosophy or science into three parts. In the first part, he strives to determine the issues in question systematically. By dividing the concept of human activity he uncovers the features common to philosophy and science as well as the features by which these two disciplines are distinguished. The inspiration is found especially in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In the second part, the same problem is dealt from the historical perspective. By way of a reconstruction of the origins of philosophy and science, the author shows the features by which these disciplines got mutually separated and secluded from the previous trends. In the third part, the author contrasts the presented approaches and highlights why it is reasonable to investigate the nature of philosophy and science from both, systematical and historical point of view.
31. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Miroslav Hanke Sémantika vět Martina Le Maistra Rekonstrukce scholastické sémantiky a ontologie komplexů
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Martin Le Maistre (1432–1482), also known as Martinus Magistri, was one of the nominalists at the university of Paris from the watershed between medieval and postmedieval scholasticism. This influential logician, moral philosopher and theologian wrote a repeatedly edited treatise on logical consequence Tractatus consequentiarum. The present paper focuses on this treatise where Le Maistre, influenced by late-medieval logicians, develops a theory of validity based upon postulating abstract compound entities as sentential meanings (complexe significabile).
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Ulrich G. Leinsle Physica Sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit by Bernd Roling
35. 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).
36. 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.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. 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.