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Studia Neoaristotelica

A Journal of Analytic Scholasticism

Volume 10

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Displaying: 1-19 of 19 documents


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1. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Jan Petříček

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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.
2. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Miroslav Hanke

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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).
3. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
David Peroutka OCD

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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.
4. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Ondřej Sikora

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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.

statě & diskuse

5. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Stanislav Sousedík

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6. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Ondřej Sikora

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7. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 3
Prokop Sousedík

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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.

articles

8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.

reviews

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

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interview

14. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Lukáš Novák, Orcid-ID Daniel D. Novotný Orcid-ID

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articles

15. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Richard Swinburne

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There is a good a priori argument for the doctrine of the Trinity, from the need for any divine being to have another divine being to love suffi ciently to provide for him a third divine being whom to love and by whom to be loved. But most people who have believed the doctrine of the Trinity have believed it on the basis of the teaching of Jesus as interpreted by the church. The only reason for believing this teaching would be if Jesus led the kind of life which a priori we would expect an incarnate God to live in order to identify with our suffering, make atonement for our sins, and to reveal truth to us; culminated by a miracle which God alone could do and which would also authenticate the teaching. Given good a posteriori evidence for the existence of God, there is enough historical evidence to make it probable that Jesus did live that sort of life, and so to believe the doctrine of the Trinity.
16. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Theodore Scaltsas

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Plato was the first philosopher to discover the metaphysical phenomenon of plural-subjects and plural-predication; e.g. you and I are two, but neither you, nor I are two. I argue that Plato devised an ontology for plural-predication through his Theory of Forms, namely, plural-partaking in a Form. Furthermore, I argue that Plato used plural-partaking to offer an ontology of related individuals without reifying relations. My contention is that Plato’s theory of plural-relatives has evaded detection in the exegetical literature because his account of plural-subjects through the Theory of Forms had not been recognised for what it is. I further submit that Plato’s handling of related individuals through plural-predication is not only a “first” in philosophy, but also an “only”, having remained a unique account in the metaphysics of relations. I hope that Plato’s account will introduce a fresh approach to contemporary debates on the subject.
17. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Miroslav Hanke

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Conceptual analysis of logical consequence can be regarded as a crucial part of any logical theory. The present paper focuses on John Mair’s approach to this issue from both historical and systematic point of view. Mair’s task is to analyse the concepts of modality and validity in universal token-based languages with non-compositional semantics based on network evaluation. To fulfil it, Mair addresses modal paradoxes, validity paradoxes and inferences with paradoxical components. Both truth and modality and truth and validity, when conceived as semantic properties, turn out to be mutually independent as a result of Mair’s semantics: there are true impossible propositions and possible propositions which cannot be true and truth-preservation turns out to be neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for validity.

notes & discussions

18. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Derek von Barandy

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On Jaakko Hintikka’s understanding of Aristotle’s modal thought, Aristotle is committed to a version of the Principle of Plenitude, which is the thesis that no genuine possibility will go unactualized in an infinity of time. If in fact Aristotle endorses the Principle of Plenitude, everything becomes necessary. Despite the strong evidence that Aristotle indeed accepts that Principle of Plenitude, there are key texts in which Aristotle seems to contradict it. On Hintikka’s final word on the matter, Aristotle either endorses the Principle of Plentitude or Aristotle is simply inconsistent. Without challenging Hintikka’s interpretation of the relevant texts, I show how Aristotle may accept a form of the Principle of Plenitude that allows for genuine unactualized possibilities in the world. What allows me to reconcile theseemingly inconsistent data is to show how Aristotle is only committed to a de re version of the Principle of Plenitude. After I lay out my proposal, I show how it opens up new ways in which we might understand Aristotle’s attempt to reject fatalism in his De interpretatione 9.

review articles

19. Studia Neoaristotelica: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
William F. Vallicella

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This review article explores in a critical spirit the differences between constituent and relational ontology as practiced by four contemporary Aristotelian philosophers, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Lukáš Novák, and Stanislav Sousedík.