This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The (...) volume includes 35 contributions. It is divided into nine parts: 1. Who Created the Concept of God; 2. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Timelessness and Spacelessness of God; 3. God and Perfect Goodness, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Freedom; 4. God, Fundamentality and Creation of All Else; 5. Simplicity and Ineffability of God; 6. God, Necessity and Abstract Objects; 7. God, Infinity, and Pascal's Wager; 8. God and (Meta-)Mathematics; and 9. God and Mind. (shrink)

One classical version of cosmological argument, defended famously by Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, deduces the existence of a First Cause from the existence of a particular sort of causal series: one that is ‘essentially ordered’. This argument has received renewed defence in recent work by Feser, Cohoe, and Kerr. I agree with these philosophers that the argument is sound. I believe, however, that the standard defence given of the ECA in these philosophers can be complemented by a formulation that (...) appeals to the powers theory of possibility. This approach to possibility has been defended in recent years by, for example, Pruss, Jacobs, and Vetter. In this article, I show how this modal theory allows us to defend the ECA in a way that is dialectically advantageous as well as clarifying. (shrink)

Avicenna's proof for the existence of God (the Necessary Existent) in the Metaphysics of the Salvation relies on the claim that every possible existent shares a common cause. I argue that Avicenna has good reason to hold this claim given that he thinks that (1) every essentially ordered causal series originates in a first, common cause and that (2) every possible existent belongs to an essentially ordered series. Showing Avicenna's commitment to 1 and 2 allows me to respond to Herbert (...) Davidson's and Richard Swinburne's claim that Avicenna's proof for the Necessary Existent is incomplete and fallacious -/- . (shrink)

'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. (...) Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a (...) more promising variant of the phenomenal concept strategy. Philosophers who endorse this strategy think that the difficulties we have fitting conscious qualia into a scientific picture may owe to the peculiar nature of indexical concepts. They point to the fact that, when we try to convey the feel of our experiences, we employ context-dependent gestures and/or utterances that are indexed to perspectives unique to each person. However, according to the theory I defend, there are three ways signs can refer, namely by convention, causal contact, and similarity. Since similarity is not reducible to proximity, I argue that a theory of reference that turns on shared quality can bypass some of the implausible consequences that plague indexical accounts. In the first chapter, I describe the apparatus needed to make sense of this claim. In the second chapter, I present my account of iconic reference. In the third chapter, I justify my reliance on a distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal. In the fourth chapter, I sketch a trinitarian metaphysics well-suited to house the foregoing account of qualia. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophical theology the doctrine of divine simplicity has regained attention. There are several new defenses of simplicity in the literature. One of the more surprising, and troubling, aspects of the contemporary defenses amongst Christian philosophers and theologians is a seeming lack of understanding about how radical the doctrine of divine simplicity truly is. As such, I wish to do a few things in this paper. First, systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, argue that divine simplicity is (...) not a possible perfection. Third, offer some concluding remarks and remaining issues that will need to be sorted out for the debate over simplicity to continue. (shrink)

Resumen Juan Duns Escoto configura su pensamiento filosófico desde una perspectiva cristiana, en la que la acción divina omnipotente crea y conserva las criaturas. Toda obra del creador ad extra es contingente, de manera que la realidad física recibe ese añadido en el nivel ontológico y operativo. Los objetivos de este trabajo son dos: determinar el alcance y la modalidad en que la potentia Dei actúa sobre el mundo natural según el Doctor Sutil y resolver una posible inconsistencia cuando este (...) pensador analiza la capacidad del homo viator para alcanzar certeza en el conocimiento experiencial.John Duns Scotus molds his philosophical thought from a Christian perspective, in which an omnipotent divine action creates and preserves creatures. All what the creator produces ad extra is contingent, so whatever is added to physical reality belongs to an ontological and operational level. This paper aims to determine the extent and manner in which, according to the Doctor Subtilis, the potentia Dei operates on the natural world and to resolve a possible inconsistency when Scotus analyzes the ability of the homo viator to achieve certainty in the experiential knowledge. (shrink)

This is the first special issue of the British Journal of the History of Philosophy to be devoted to the thought of the Middle Ages. Its topic is relations. The articles have been chosen to give an...

In this article, I present the conception of the first object of human intellect in the thought of the leading representatives of 13th century Scholasticism. The first object of a cognitive faculty is the essence that determines the proper domain of that faculty; thus the first object of human intellect is what defines the possible extension of human epistemic possibilities. The conception of the first object of human intellect presupposes and implies definite solution of important epistemological, metaphysical, and anthropological questions. (...) While one current of scholastic opinion, represented by St. Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent favored God as the first object of human intellect, more empirically minded Aquinas upheld the Aristotelian position that the proper object of human intellectual cognition is the essence of material reality; Duns Scotus evolved an elaborate position that tried to steer the middle course between the solutions of his predecessors and overcome the one-sidedness of their insights. Finally, I proceed to vindicate my opinion, that the epistemology of the 15th century thinker Nicholas of Cusa remained under significant influence of the scholastic debates and solutions. (shrink)

This article presents an interpretation of Deleuze’s concept of difference-in-itself. I argue that this is best understood as an adption of Duns Scotus’s concept of ultimate difference. After suggesting that the influence of Scotus on Deleuze extends beyond their shared commitment to the univocity of being, I turn to briefly review Deleuze’s notion of absolute difference. I proceed from there to explain Scotus’s accounts of univocity and ultimate difference, throughout noting the many stark parallels with Deleuze. On the basis of (...) this Scotistic reading of Deleuzian difference, I then show how Deleuze’s synthesis of univocal being and difference-in-itself can be uniquely situated within the fourteenth-century Scotistic disputations on the predicability of univocal being to ultimate difference. I conclude with some suggestions on possible further connections between Deleuze and medieval metaphysics which are opened up through this association of Deleuze with Scotus and the Scotistic tradition. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was one of the most important and influential philosophertheologians of the High Middle Ages. His brilliantly complex and nuanced thought, which earned him the nickname "the Subtle Doctor," left a mark on discussions of such disparate topics as the semantics of religious language, the problem of universals, divine illumination, and the nature of human freedom. This essay first lays out what is known about Scotus's life and the dating of his works. It then offers an overview (...) of some of his key positions in four main areas of philosophy: natural theology, metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, and ethics and moral psychology. (shrink)

At the center of all medieval Christian accounts of both metaphysics and ethics stands the claim that being and goodness are necessarily connected, and that grasping the nature of this connection is fundamental to explaining the nature of goodness itself. In that vein, medievals offered two distinct ways of conceiving this necessary connection: the nature approach and the creation approach. The nature approach explains the goodness of an entity by an appeal to the entity’s nature as the type of thing (...) it is, and the extent to which it fulfills or perfects the potentialities in its nature. In contrast, the creation approach explains both the being and goodness of an entity by an appeal to God’s creative activity: on this view, both a thing’s being and its goodness are derived from, and explained in terms of, God’s being and goodness. Studies on being and goodness in medieval philosophy often culminate in the synthesizing work of Thomas Aquinas, the leading Dominican theologian at Paris in the 13th century, who brought together these two rival theories about the nature of goodness. Unfortunately, few have paid attention to a distinctively Franciscan approach to the topic around this same time period. My dissertation provides a remedy to this oversight by means of a thorough examination of John Duns Scotus’s approach to being and goodness—an approach that takes into account the shifting tide toward voluntarism (both ethical and theological) at the University of Paris in the late 13th century. I argue that Scotus is also a synthesizer of sorts, harmonizing the two distinct nature approaches of Augustine and Aristotle with his own unique ideas in ways that have profound implications for the future of medieval ethical theorizing, most notably, in his rejection of both the natural law and ethical eudaimonism of Thomas Aquinas. After the introduction, I analyze the nature of primary goodness—the goodness that Scotus thinks is convertible with being and thus a transcendental attribute of everything that exists. There, I compare the notion of convertibility of being and goodness among Scotus and his contemporaries. While Scotus agrees with the mainstream tradition that being and goodness are necessarily coextensive properties of everything that exists, he argues that being and good are formally rather than conceptually distinct. I argue that when the referents of being and good are considered, both views amount to the same thing. But when the concepts of being and good are considered, positing a formal distinction does make a good deal of difference: good does not simply add something to being conceptually, but formally: it is a quasi-attribute of being that exists in the world independently of our conception of it. Thus Scotus’s formal distinction provides a novel justification for the necessary connection between being and goodness. Furthermore, I argue that Scotus holds an Augustinian hierarchy of being. This hierarchical ranking of being is based upon the magnitude or perfection of the thing’s nature. But since goodness is a necessarily coextensive perfection of being, it too comes in degrees dependent upon the type of being, arranged in terms of the same hierarchy. This account, while inspired by Augustine’s hierarchical nature approach, is expressed in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics. But this necessary connection between being and goodness in medieval philosophy faced a problem: Following Augustine, medievals claimed that “everything that exists is good insofar as it exists.”’ But how is that compatible with the existence of sinful acts: if every being, in so far as it has being, is good, then every act, insofar as it has being, is good. But if sinful acts are bad, then we seem to be committed to saying either that bad acts are good, or that not every act, in so far as it has being, is good. This first option seems infelicitous; the second denies Augustine’s claims that “everything that exists is good.” Lombard and his followers solve this problem by distinguishing ontological goodness from moral goodness and claiming that moral goodness is an accident of some acts and does not convert with being. So the sinful act, qua act, is (ontologically) good. But the sinful act, qua disorder is (morally) bad. Eventually, three distinctive grades of accidental or moral goodness will be applied to human acts: generic, circumstantial, and meritorious. I argue that Scotus follows the traditional account of Peter Lombard, Philip the Chancellor, Albert the Great, and Bonaventure in distinguishing ontological goodness from moral goodness, and claiming that only the former converts with being, while the latter is an accident of the act. Aquinas, in contrast, writing in the heyday of the Aristotelian renaissance, focuses instead on the role of the act in the agent’s perfection and posits his convertibility thesis of being and goodness in the moral as well as the metaphysical realm. Thus, when one begins a late medieval discussion with Aquinas, and then considers what Scotus says, it seems as though Scotus is the radical who departs from the conservative teachings of Aquinas. And this is just false: we need to situate both Aquinas and Scotus within the larger Sentence Commentary tradition extending back to Peter Lombard and his followers in order to understand their agreement and divergence from the tradition. Next, I turn the discussion to Scotus’s analysis of rightness and wrongness. I first explore the relationship between rightness and God’s will, and situate Scotus’s account within contemporary discussions of theological voluntarism. I argue Scotus holds a restricted-causal-will-theory —whereby only contingent deontological propositions depend upon God’s will for their moral status. In contrast to Aquinas, Scotus denies that contingent moral laws—the Second Table of the 10 Commandments (such do not steal, do not murder, etc.)—are grounded in human nature, and thus he limits the extent to which moral reasoning can move from natural law to the moral obligations we have toward one another. In conjunction with these claims, I argue that Scotus distinguishes goodness from rightness: An act’s rightness will depend on its conformity to either (1) a necessary moral truth or (2) God’s commanding some contingent moral truth. The moral goodness of an act, in contrast, involves right reason’s determination of the suitability or harmony of all factors pertaining to the act. In establishing this, also argue that much of the disparity among contemporary Scotus scholarship on the question of whether Scotus was a divine command theorist or natural law theorist should be directly attributed to a failure to recognize Scotus’s separation of the goodness of an act from the rightness of an act. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with answering the question, what is the central argument of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing that brings its opening ontological approach to the subject of first philosophy to its ultimate theological goal and conclusion? This dissertation contends that it is the function of the fundamental scientific first principles of metaphysics, and in particular the fundamental primary notion necessary, to provide the intelligible link that Avicenna employs to demonstrate the existence and true-nature of the divine necessary existence (...) in itself on the basis of his doctrine of being. This conclusion is pursued through a systematic and cumulative line of inquiry that begins in Part I with Avicenna’s logical–cum–epistemological doctrine of conceptualization and assent, the heuristic order of the basic scientific questions, and his theory of a demonstrative science. The thesis then moves from the wider concentric circles concerned with logical matters into a series of narrowing concentric circles pertaining to the scientific order of the MH. Part II presents a close analysis of the Metaphysics of the Healing’s novel reception and reorganization of Aristotelian metaphysics according to Avicenna’s theory of demonstrative science, which consists in a subject, scientific first principles, and objects of inquiry that includes the species, proper accidents, and the science’s ultimate goal which is the aitiological–cum–theological inquiry into the causes of being. Part III transitions into a still narrower set of concentric circles that provide a detailed explication of the formal and material aspects of the scientific first principles of the Metaphysics of the Healing. Finally, the main argument of the thesis reaches the central point and question of the dissertation in Part IV, which establishes the fundamentality of the primary notion the necessary in the ontology, aitiology, and theology of the Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing. Part IV concludes that the principal function of the fundamental primary notion the necessary is to provide the intelligible link that connects Avicenna’s doctrine of being with the divine necessary existence in itself. (shrink)

This paper comprises two parts. The first part is an introduction to Auriol’s moderate conceptualism, as it is presented in his Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, distinction 9, question 2, article 1. The second part is an edition of the text. In the introduction, I focus on Auriol’s use of the noetic tool of connotation. My thesis, in particular, is that connotation is a necessary prerequisite to his moderate conceptu- alism. To this purpose, the first part of this (...) introduction will be devoted to a brief presentation of Auriol’s conceptualism. In the second part, Auriol’s theory of essential predication will be presented. In the third part, I will present my claim that Auriol’s theory of essential predication can only be made sense of when read against the background of his theory of connotation as applied to intellectual cognition. Finally, I will offer a collation of Auriol’s Commentary on Book II of the Sentences, dis- tinction 9, question 2, article 1, obtained by collating eight manuscripts, which hand down Auriol’s text, that is, Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, ms. Conv. Soppr. B.6.121, Firenze, ms. Conv. Soppr. A. 3.120, Napoli, Biblioteca nazionale, ms. VII.C.3, Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, ms. 161, scaff. ix, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. latin 15867; Pelplin, Biblioteka Seminarium duchownego, ms. 46/85, Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Borgiano 404, Vaticano (Città del), Biblioteca Apostolica, ms. Vat. lat. 942. (shrink)

This project is guided and motivated by the question concerning the nature of the phantasm as that which mediates between sensation and intellection in John Duns Scotus' account of cognition. Scotus embraces Aristotle's claim that the intellect cannot think without the phantasm. The phantasm is in a corporeal organ, yet the immaterial intellect must act with it to produce an intelligible species. In this project I examine the critical elements of Scotus' cognitive theory in order to understand the nature of (...) the phantasm. In the first chapter I discuss key elements of Aristotle's metaphysics and give a close, textual reading of De Anima guided by his claim that the relationship of the body and soul is highly specific. I then focus on his claim in De Anima 2.12 that sensation involves the reception of the sensible form without the matter. In the second chapter, I discuss Scotus' key theological notions that guide and inform his cognitive project. The beatific vision requires the presence of the divine essence in its own existence to the intellect. As the highest cognitive experience, the beatific vision is definitive of all cognitive experience making the presence of the object to the cognitive faculty of central importance. The discussion of the incarnation shows that the world is sacralized and thus, is a worthy object of cognitive attention in itself. In the third chapter, I discuss Scotus' understanding of the body-soul relationship focusing on his notion of person to both secure the unity of the human being and to ground the mediation between sensation and intellection. In the fourth chapter, I first discuss Aquinas' claim that sensation requires a spiritual change. While Scotus's account is in many respects the same as Aquinas', Scotus does not maintain that sensation is primarily passive and is thus, able to account for cognitive attention by way of his understanding of the unity of the sense organ, immanent actions, and sensation as intuitive cognition. What emerges in this discussion is Scotus' particular understanding of an intentio by which the nature of the phantasm can be understood. (shrink)