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1. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
William A. Lauinger

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Bernard Williams famously argued that eternal life is undesirable for a human because it would inevitably grow intolerably boring. I will argue against Williams and those who share his view. To make my case, I will provide an account of what staves off boredom in our current, earthly-mortal lives, and then I will draw on this account while advancing reasons for thinking that eternal life is desirable, given certain conditions. Though my response to Williams will partly overlap with some prior responses to Williams, especially the one offered by J. M. Fischer, my response will also be distinctive in some important ways. For instance, it will be distinctive in that it will discuss the role that one’s part-whole-reality conception plays in fending off boredom, where by “one’s part-whole-reality conception” I mean “one’s conception of his or her place (or purpose) in the whole of reality.”
2. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Miroslav Hanke

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The paper focuses on the concepts of truth, truth-making and truth-preservation and their role in defining deductive validity as analysed by the late-medieval nominalist scholar Martin Le Maistre (1432–1481) in his Tractatus consequentiarum. This treatise, examined from the point of view of fourteenth-century British and Parisian influences, can be characterised as a critical adoption of the previous logical tradition and as the analysis of validity in term of truth-preservation. Part of this analysis is a study of self-referential phenomena, in particular, of self-referential inferences which are addressed in terms of a Bradwardinian implicit-meaning analysis of self-reference by Le Maistre. Also, his analysis of “consequentia formalis” summarises the fourteenth-century development of the discussion and compares alternative approaches towards formality.
3. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Joseph E. Krylow

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In this essay, I present Augustine’s argument for the immortality of the soul in De Immortalitate Animae and critically evaluate it. I claim that the objections previous commentators have brought against the argument do not clearly show it to be problematic. Nevertheless, the argument does face several serious problems. One such problem is that it fails to demonstrate a personal immortality. There are several interesting responses one could make to address this supposed failure, but each such response has an alternate problem of its own.
4. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Steven Baldner

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Albert the Great does not regard the creation of the world as philosophically demonstrable. In this article, it is shown why this is so: because Albert regards the temporal beginning of the world as essential to the meaning of creation, and because he holds that it is impossible to demonstrate the temporal beginning of the world, he concludes that the creation of the world is philosophically indemonstrable. Albert insists that creation must imply a temporal beginning because he thinks that temporal duration can only be created if it is created at a first instant. Albert’s position necessitates a sharp distinction between creation and conservation. Particular attention is given to Albert’s De causis et processu universitatis and Summa theologiae.
5. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer

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Bernard Lonergan argued that a Thomist theory of intellect must begin with advertence to the act of understanding. He distinguished his cognitional theory from a conceptualism that neglects the experience of insight and reflection on it. Early in his career, he explained how the conceptualist approach misinterprets Aquinas and creates problems for the metaphysics of rational psychology. This article explains Lonergan’s position and illustrates the conceptualist alternative by analysing Joseph Owens’s view of cognition. By explaining the metaphysical differences between Lonergan’s and Owens’s opposing views of human knowing in relation to their distinctive readings of Aquinas, this article contributes to a more accurate reading of Aquinas on the act of understanding.
6. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Tilo Schabert

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The title of this article evokes the problem in the pursuit of which Eric Voegelin, one of the foremost political philosophers in the twentieth century, produced his work. To inquire into what is called here “the movement unto knowing between reality and consciousness,” Voegelin progressively differentiated his language concerning “reality” and “consciousness.” In fact, language itself became for him a central theme. In his late essay The Beginning of the Beginning he added to the notions of reality and consciousness that of “language,” in one and the same “complex”” It is through language, he maintained, that reality becomes present to consciousness. To know reality means to enter into the “story” that reality is. In his quest for a theory of consciousness, the acme of his theory of politics, Voegelin found himself compelled to develop a theory of language.
7. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
David Vessey

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Hans-Georg Gadamer joins Martin Heidegger in thinking we need to jettison “subject” and related terms from our philosophical vocabulary. Gadamer thinks the term is problematic for different reasons than Heidegger, though, and thus has a different solution than Heidegger: a recovery of the term “Person.” Here I look at Gadamer’s reasons for rejecting the term “subject,” how Gadamer understands the historical development of the term “person” from the Ancient Greek prosopon through Pope Benedict XVI’s understanding of the Third Person of the Trinity as communio, and finally how Gadamer’s understanding of personhood as being-in-dialogue avoids the problems with the term “subject.”
8. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Peter Dillard

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Drawing upon Saul Kripke’s discussion of rules, James F. Ross deduces the immateriality of thinking from the metaphysical determinacy of thinking and the metaphysical indeterminacy of any physical process. It has been objected that Ross does not establish the metaphysical indeterminacy of what function a physical process realizes, that Ross does not show the incoherence of a highly deflationary view of our talk about thinking, and that Ross opens up an unbridgeable gulf between sui generis thinking and behavior. Edward Feser has recently defended Ross’s argument from these objections. The present paper explains why Ross’s argument remains vulnerable to all three objections.
9. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
William F. Vallicella

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This review article summarizes and in part criticizes Hugh J. McCann’s detailed elaboration of the consequences of the idea that God is absolutely sovereign and thus unlimited in knowledge and power in his 2012 Creation and the Sovereignty of God. While there is much to agree with in McCann’s treatment, it is argued that divine sovereignty cannot extend as far as he would like to extend it. The absolute lord of the natural and moral orders cannot be absolutely sovereign over the conceptual and modal orders.

book reviews

10. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
David Rozema

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11. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Joshua W. Schulz

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12. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
William M. Diem

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13. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Jason T. Eberl

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14. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Francis J. Beckwith

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15. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Daniel B. Gallagher

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16. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Joshua Nunziato

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17. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Dylan Pahman

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18. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 1
Gene Fendt

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