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Studia Neoaristotelica

A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism

Volume 10, Issue 2, 2013

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Displaying: 1-6 of 6 documents


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1. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Nicholas Rescher

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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.
2. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter

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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.
3. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Mark K. Spencer

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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.
4. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Vlastimil Vohánka

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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.
5. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Miroslav Hanke

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Insolubilia novissima is a short anonymous fifteenth-century treatise on semantic paradoxes printed in the Cambridge compendium Libellus sophistarum. Along with a working edition of this treatise, basic information about its content and historical and systematic context is offered. Insolubilia novissima endorses the Swyneshedian contextualist solution to paradoxes based on distinguishing between compositional and contextual meaning of sentences.

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6. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Paul Richard Blum

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