Category: Aquinas and Thomism
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Frege Meets Aquinas: A Passage from De Ente et Essentia
Here is a passage from Chapter 3 of Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (tr. Robert T. Miller, emphasis added): The nature, however, or the essence thus understood can be considered in two ways. First, we can consider it according to its proper notion, and this is to consider it absolutely. In this way, nothing is…
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Geach on the Real Distinction II: The Argument from Intentionality
See Geach on the Real Distinction I for some background on the distinctio realis. This post lays out the argument from intentionality to the real distinction. A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts and perceptions is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular…
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Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege Back Into Aquinas
I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002). I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating. I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204) Since Kenny borrows heavily from Peter Geach, I will…
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Geach on the Real Distinction I
Oceans of ink have been spilled over the centuries on the celebrated distinctio realis between essence and existence (esse). You have no idea how much ink, and vitriol too, has flooded the scholastic backwaters and sometimes spilled over into mainstream precincts. Anyway, the distinction has long fascinated me and I hold to some version of it. I will first give a…
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Three Dualisms: Simple, Compound, and Hylomorphic
This post continues my critique of hylomorphic dualism in the philosophy of mind. (See Hylomorphism category.) I will argue that hylomorphic dualism inherits one of the difficulties of compound substance dualism. But to understand the latter, we need to contrast it with simple or pure substance dualism. By 'substance' I mean primary substance, prote ousia…
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Feser Defends Hylomorphic Dualism Against My Criticism
I want to thank Edward Feser for responding to my recent post, A Problem for the Hylomorphic Dualist. And while you are at Ed's site, please read his outstanding entry, So you think you understand the cosmological argument?, an entry with which I agree entirely. Ed writes, Naturally, since I am a hylemorphic dualist, I…
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A Problem for the Hylomorphic Dualist
A position in the philosophy of mind that is currently under-represented and under-discussed is Thomistic or hylomorphic dualism. Whereas the tendency of the substance dualist is to identify the person with his soul or mind, the hylomorphic approach identifies the person with a soul-body composite in which soul stands to body as form (morphe) stands…
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How Are Form and Matter Related in Compound Material Substances?
Favoring as I do constituent ontology, I am sympathetic to that type of constituent ontology which is hylomorphic ontological analysis, as practiced by Aristotelians, Thomists, et al. The obscurity of such fundamental concepts as form, matter, act, potency, substance, and others is, however, troubling. Let's see if we can make sense of the relation between form…
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Hell
Over at The Constructive Curmudgeon I happened upon this quotation which is relevant to recent concerns: The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a…
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How Could an Impassible God be Offended or Know Any Contingent Fact?
Earlier (here and here) I asked how an all-good God could sentence a human agent to sempiternal punishment, punishment that has a beginning but no end. If the punishment must fit the crime, and the crimes of finite agents are themselves finite, then it would seem that no one, no matter what his crimes, would…
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Posits or Inventions? Geach and Butchvarov on Intentionality
One philosopher's necessary explanatory posit is another's mere invention. In his rich and fascinating article "Direct Realism Without Materialism" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1994), Panayot Butchvarov rejects epistemic intermediaries as "philosophical inventions." Thus he rejects sense data, sensations, ways of being appeared to, sense experiences, mental representations, ideas, images, looks, seemings, appearances, and the like.…
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Aquinas on Intentionality: Towards a Critique
Yesterday I quoted Peter Geach in exposition of Aquinas' theory of intentionality. I will now quote Anthony Kenny in exposition of the same doctrine: The form is individuated when existing with esse naturale in an actual example of a species; it is also individuated, in quite a different way, when it exists with esse intentionale…
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Esse Intentionale and Esse Naturale: Notes on Geach on Aquinas on Intentionality
A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance whom I have named 'Max Black.' How are we to understand the relation between the mental act of my thinking, which is a transient datable…
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Total Dependence and Essence/Existence Composition
Anthony Flood has done metaphysicians a service by making available John N. Deck’s excellent, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Language of Total Dependence. This is an essay that Anthony Kenny, no slouch of a philosopher, saw fit to include in his anthology, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). Mr.…
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Love Your Opponent
"We should love both: those whose opinion we follow, and those whose opinion we reject. For both have applied themselves to the quest for the truth, and both have helped us in it." St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book XII, Lecture 9.