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1. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 52 > Issue: 4
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2. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
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3. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Jean-Louis Hudry Aristotle on Modality and Predicative Necessity
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Many logicians have tried to formalize a modal logic from the Prior Analytics, but the general view is that Aristotle has failed to offer a consistent modal logic there. This paper explains that Aristotle is not interested in modal logic as such. Modalities for him pertain to the relations of predication, without challenging the assertoric system of deductions simpliciter. Thus, demonstrations or dialectical deductions have modal predicates and yet are still deductions simpliciter. It is a matter of distinguishing inferential necessity that applies to every deduction from the modal predicates in the two premises and conclusion. The modality of demonstrations can be either necessary or possible. The necessity is predicative, i.e., independent of inferential necessity. While the possible demonstration challenges the predicative necessity of the necessary demonstration, it preserves the inferential necessity of the deduction simpliciter.
4. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
About our Contributors
5. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Anders Kraal Is the Existence of the Best Possible World Logically Impossible?
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Since the 1960s an increasing number of philosophers have endorsed the thesis that there can be no such thing as “the best possible world.” In this paper I examine the main arguments for this thesis as put forth by George Schlesinger, Alvin Plantinga, Bruce Reichenbach, Peter Forrest, and Richard Swinburne. I argue that none of these arguments succeed in establishing the thesis and that the logical possibility of the best possible world is as yet an open question.
6. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Plato’s Moral Realism: The Discovery of the Presuppositions of Ethics. By John M. Rist
7. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Mathew Lu Aristotle on Abortion and Infanticide
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Some recent commentators have thought that, if updated with the findings of modern embryology, Aristotle’s views on abortion would yield a pro-life conclusion. On the basis of a careful reading of the relevant passage from Politics VII, I argue that the matter is more complicated than simply replacing his defective empirical embryological claims with our more accurate ones. Since Aristotle’s view on abortion was shaped not only by a defective embryology but also by an acceptance of the classical Greek practice of exposure/ infanticide, substituting a more accurate embryology will not straightforwardly generate a strongly pro-life conclusion. In the end, this analysis reveals how different Aristotle’s ethical thought on this matter really is from the contemporary discussion of abortion.
8. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Dominika Dzwonkowska The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics. By David J. Gunkel
9. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Wojciech P. Grygiel Multiverse, M-theory, and God the Creator
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From a physical point of view, the no-boundary Hartle-Hawking model put forward in 1983 was an attempt to demonstrate that the incorporation of quantum effects into the general theory of relativity would solve the problem of singularities that make the theory of relativity incomplete. This was achieved by imposing the so called “no-boundary conditions” whereby the Universe could emerge with non-zero probability from a non-existing state. Stephen Hawking quickly turned this result into a metaphysical claim that physical laws explained away the necessity of the Divine intervention at the origin of the Universe. This paper offers an inquiry into the line of arguments presented by Hawking and Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design and supported with the claim that the yet unknown versionof the superstring theory, the M-theory, is an ultimate theory of the Universe. The upshot of the paper is that although the argument in the Grand Design relies on the newer achievements of physics embedded in the controversial multi-verse setting, it does not escape the question of the origin of the most general laws of physics that bring the Universe into existence.
10. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Thomas Krettek, S.J. Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations. By Thomas E. Hill, Jr.
11. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Deva F. Kemmis Hicks Exotic Spaces in German Modernism. By Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
12. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Margaret I. Hughes Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective. By Alice M. Ramos
13. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
John Zeis A Rawlsian Pro-Life Argument against Vegetarianism
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Animal rights and vegetarianism for ethical reasons are positions gaining in influence in contemporary American culture. Although I think that certain rights for animals are consistent with and even entailed by the Catholic understanding of morality, vegetarianism is not. There is a plausible argument for an omnivorous diet from a Rawlsian original position. It is in direct contradiction to the Rawlsian-influenced ethical vegetarianism espoused by Mark Rowlands. Vegetarianism is not the moral high ground: ethical vegetarianism is in fact contrary to a position on animals that is fundamentally pro-life.
14. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 1
Gregory S. Moss Hegel’s Free Mechanism: The Resurrection of the Concept
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In this paper I systematically reconstruct Hegel’s concept of “free mechanism” as developed in the Science of Logic. The term “free mechanism” appears absurd since each of the terms constituting it appears mutually exclusive. I argue that we may grasp it only on (1) the assumption of self-reference and (2) via a triad of syllogisms, which altogether constitute a process of alternating middle terms. On the whole, I employ Hegel’s account of “free mechanism” to illuminate the activity of objectivity, whereby the self-determining concept resurrects itself from its dormancy in an indifferent totality.
15. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
About Our Contributors
16. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
Michael Tkacz Albertus Magnus and the Error of Ptolemy: Metaphysics and the Origins of Empirical Research Programs
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Is our science of the physical world a matter of theoretical description with predictive value, or is it instead a search for the productive causes of observed phenomena? Ancient astronomers such as Ptolemy maintained the former; ancient cosmologists such as Aristotle the latter. This debate is a central theme in Albert Magnus’s thirteenth-century Aristotelian commentaries. This paper shows how Albert defended the possibility of empirical science aimed at demonstrating the causes of observed phenomena. In the course of his defense, Albert identifies a specific error committed by Ptolemy concerning the subject of physical theory. The identification and correction of this error provides the basis upon which a proper metaphysical foundation for the empirical sciences can be laid. This foundation is nothing other than the recovery of the Aristotelian notion of form as the immanent intelligibility of physical natures.
17. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
Michael Hector Storck Arts and Artifacts: An Aristotelian Approach
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In this paper I consider the nature of artifacts by looking at them as essentially connected with art in the broad sense of τέχvη or ars. After discussing the natural and the artificial in the light of Aristotle’s definition of nature in Physics II.1, I discuss artifacts using Aristotle’s definition of art in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. This approach to artifacts is able to include not only paintings, poems, and plays but also found works of art, for there are some arts, such as navigation, whose making consists in finding rather than physical alteration. In addition to accommodating all the different sorts of artifacts that are produced by human making, approaching artifacts in this way implies that being an artifact does not distinguish any one kind of being. Rather, all artifacts essentially result from and thus relate to human making understood as action directed at something apart from the maker.
18. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis. By Richard A. Richards
19. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
James G. Murphy, S.J. The Principle of Double Effect: Act-Types and Intentions
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Objections to the principle of double effect usually concern its first and second conditions (that the act not be evil in itself, and that the evil effect may not be intended). The difficulties often arise from a rejection of the idea that acts have a moral nature independent of context, and a tendency to interpret intention as purely psychological. This article argues that the “act itself” should be understood as the act-type and suggests that examples of evil act-types are not hard to find. It argues that the notion of intention is involved in both conditions, but in different ways. It proposes that these different ways can be interestingly illuminated by Anscombe’s distinction between acting intentionally and acting with an intention.
20. International Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 53 > Issue: 2
David W. Rodick Gabriel Marcel and American Philosophy
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Gabriel Marcel’s thought is deeply informed by the American philosophical tradition. Marcel’s earliest work focused upon the idealism of Josiah Royce. By the time Marcel completed his Royce writings, he had moved beyond idealism and adopted a form of metaphysical realism attributed to William Ernest Hocking. Marcel also developed a longstanding relationship with the American philosopher Henry Bugbee. These important philosophical relationships will be examined through the Marcellian themes of ontological exigence, intersubjective being, and secondary reflection. Marcel’s relationships with these philosophers are not serendipitous. They are expressions of Marcel’s deep Christian faith.