Studia Neoaristotelica

The modal argument for the existence of a Cartesian human soul proposed by Richard Swinburne more than thirty years ago, if slightly adjusted and interpreted correctly, becomes a plausible argument for anyone who accepts modal arguments. The difficulty consists in a relatively weak justification of the second premise, of the real possibility of a disembodied existence, as a result of which the argument does not provide a real (conclusive) proof. The argument is best understood in the following terms: (1) Special divine action is excluded from the metaphysical possibilities and only the natural possibilities are considered; (2) the “conceivable” possibility of the existence of a person without a body is interpreted as a metaphysical (real) possibility, and inductive support for its reality is provided by apparent first-person-conceivability of a disembodied existence, detailed descriptions of out-of-body and near-death experiences, a priori trust in introspection in psychology and the cognitive sciences, and by the unity of consciousness and the possibility of its extension to peripersonal space; (3) statements about having a soul or being a material substance are excluded from the domain of the premises; and finally, (4) one accepts the Kripkean principle that having a body or a soul is an essential component of a person. If these conditions are met, the argument is valid, and the conclusion is made more plausible by Swinburne’s modal argument than it would be without it.Argumentum modale pro animae humanae “Cartesianae” existentia, quod R. Swinburne ante plures quam 30 annos proposuit, acceptabile reddi potest cuicumque argumenta modalia non generatim respuenti, si paululum emendetur recteque intelligatur. Omnis huius argumenti diffi cultas consistit in iustifi catione debiliore secundae eius praemissae (possibilitatem realem existendi sine corpore statuentis), quo pacto argumentum ineffi cax redditur. Argumentum vero optime intelligetur his quattuor punctis animadversis: Primo, possibilitas metaphysica non nisi possibilitates naturales comprehendere intelligatur, omni speciali Dei ingerentia exclusa. Secundo, personae possibilitas “conceptibilis” sine corpore existendi intelligatur ut realis possibilitas metaphysica. Cui realitati argumenta favent inductiva tum ex possibilitate imaginandi (aspectu primae personae) existentiam sine corpore; tum ex minutatim enarratis testimoniis experiendi status “extra corpus” et “prope mortem”; tum ex fi de fundamentali veritatis introspectionis in psychologia scientiis que cognitivis; tum ex unitate conscientiae ac possibilitate eam in spatium extra corpus extendendi. Tertio, e praemissarum congerie assertiones excludantur quibus homo animam habere vel substantiam materialem esse assumeretur. Quarto, principium S. Kripkii accipiatur, scil. corporis vel animae habitum personae essentialem esse debere. His omnibus servatis argumentum Swinburnii validum evadit, conclusionem suam plus credibilem reddens quam secus esset.

In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Italian logician, natural philosopher, and doctor of medicine Cajetan of Thiene wrote a commentary on William Heytesbury’s Regulae solvendi sophismata, which later became a part of the printed edition of Heytesbury’s treatises. Several late fifteenth century reprints sustained its circulation and further influence. Following Heytesbury, Cajetan listed four alternative treatments of paradoxes, where the first three were formulated in general logico-semantic terms and the last one in terms of obligationes. The present analysis reconstructs the first three positions in terms of the theories of logical operators endorsed as part of the solution to paradoxes. This reconstruction uncovers different underlying views of operators, namely context-sensitive (the function of operators is sensitive to contextual factors), value-functional (the function of operators is purely compositional), and supervaluationist (the function of operators saves classical tautologies by disregarding other factors).Priore dimidia parte saeculi 15 Caietanus de Thiena, logicus, physicus et medicus, commentarium super G. Hentisberi Regulis solvendi sophismata conscripsit, quod posterius una cum Hentisberi tractatibus typis impressum est. Cuius commentarii notitiam auctoritatemque continuam iteratae nonnullae eius editiones in fi ne 15 saeculi factae sustinebant. Caietanus (Hentisberum secutus) quattuor vias tractandi insolubilia distinxit, quarum tres primae conceptibus generalibus logico-semanticis, quarta doctrina de obligationibus innixae sunt. In analysi hic proposita auctor primas tres vias reconstruit, doctrinas varias de logicis coniunctionibus vel notis reserans, super quibus illae viae solvendi paradoxa fundantur. Quarum prima vim notarum a contextu sermonis dependentem facit. Altera notas pure “compositionaliter” tractat. Tertia iuxta modum doctrinae de “supervaluatione” omnes formales tautologias servat, aliis considerationibus neglectis.

The aim of the article is to compare and critically evaluate Kant’s, Aristotle’s, and von Hildebrand’s approach to the question of the moral accountability of emotions. Notoriously, Kant, in his practical philosophy, leaves hardly any place for the moral value of emotions. The only emotion that he acknowledges to possess a moral value is “Achtung für’s Gesetz”. According to Aristotle, emotions can be object of praise and blame in so far as they are formed by good or bad habits (moral virtues and vices). Von Hildebrand, not objecting to this approach of Aristotle, off ers a fi ne phenomenological analysis of how a “morally conscious” person modifi es emotions while experiencing them by either “sanctioning” or “disavowing” them. This analysis implies that emotions can be morally good or bad in still diff erent sense than the one considered by Aristotle.

According to compatibilism it is possible that an election or volition of A is truly free even if the elector cannot want – ceteris paribus – the opposite alternative (non-A). The version of compatibilism propounded in the paper is “rational” in so much as the admitted unidirectional determining factors of volition are not physical causes but rather rational reasons. We may posit this compatibilism only in case of volitions that we assess to be morally good (since moral obligation to decide diff erently implies real possibility of such diff erent volition, according to “Kantian” dictum). Particularly interesting – within the ethical sphere – is the case of moral commitment, because it constitutes a kind of necessity (obligation). Such a moral necessity (when appropriately cognized by a moral agent) may imply a certain necessity of a corresponding choice. The theory of rational compatibilism allows us to unite moral necessity and human freedom.

The so-called “Trinitarian paralogisms” are apparently legitimate instances of syllogistic inference-schemes with premises and conclusions containing expressions of the language of the Trinity doctrine, which fail to be truth- or acceptability-preserving. The logical problem of the Trinity splits into two levels of analysis. First, the technical aspects of Trinitarian paralogisms are analysed in terms of logical innovations in theories of “suppositio” and “distributio”. Second, the philosophical aspect of Trinitarian paralogisms translates into the question of formality as general applicability of logic. The sixteenth century tradition (represented by Trutfetter, Luther, and Vives) can be reconstructed as a reaction to the fourteenth century nominalist logical analysis. As opposed to post-medieval scholasticism developing the medieval approach, humanism and reformation criticise scholastic logic in terms of diff erent specifi c anthropological theories.

The teachings of Francisco Suárez tend to have the queer quality of being at once transparent and unintelligible. An example of this is his theory of relations. It is clear that, according to Suárez, a categorical relation is both really and modally identical to its foundation; on the other hand, however, the relative denomination does not apply to the foundation unless the terminus of the relation actually exists. One may ask, then: given that the foundation exists but the terminus does not, is the relation actually there, or not? Suárez does not seem to have a clear answer to this query.

Are all God’s activities identical to God? If not, which are identical to God and which not? Although it is seldom noticed, the texts of Aquinas (at least on the surface) suggest conflicting answers to these questions, giving rise to a diversity of opinion among interpreters of Aquinas. In this paper, we draw attention to this conflict and offer what we believe to be the strongest textual and speculative support for and against each of the main answers to these questions.

I discuss Josef Seifert, a realist phenomenologist, and David Oderberg, an Aristotelian. Both endorse essences, understood as objective quiddities. Both argue that no (a posteriori) law of nature is strongly (metaphysically) necessary: i.e. true in every possible world. But they disagree about weak necessity of laws: Seifert argues that no law is true in every possible world in which its referring expressions are non-empty, while Oderberg argues that some (indeed, any) is. I restate, relate, and review reasons of both authors for each of those theses. Seifert’s reasons include God’s ability to do miracles, conceivability of counterinstances to laws, and many others. Oderberg’s reasons include dependence of laws on particulars, depiction of laws as truths about properties necessarily connected with essences, and explanation of persistent regularities by means of that necessary connection. I argue that no reason of either Seifert or Oderberg is convincing, as its stands. But I also argue that given God and his ability to do miracles, the idea of “meaningful” but non-necessary connection between essences — an idea endorsed but insuffi ciently utilized by Seifert — is a better essentialist explanation of persistent regularities. This explanation implies that no law is necessary, be it weakly or strongly.

Martin Le Maistre’s Tractatus consequentiarum presents an analysis of self-reference based upon the principle that sentential meaning is closed under entailment. A semantics based on such principle off ers a conservative treatment of self-referential sentences compatible with the principle of bivalence and classical rules of inference. Le Maistre’s crucial arguments are formally reconstructed in the framework recently defended by Stephen Read and Catarina Dutilh Novaes as part of an analysis of Bradwardinian semantics.

In my paper I try to reconstruct the core of Martin Luther’s and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s view on the question of free will on the basis of my analysis of Erasmus’ treatise De libero arbitrio diatribé sive collatio (1524) and Luther’s answer De servo arbitrio (1525). I also examine the compatibility of their views, or rather the main reasons for their incompatibility. I analyse the problematic and adversarial moments of both of the great thinkers views, which I fi nd in the case of Martin Luther for example in the idea of all-doing God and in the view on the creation of the fi rst human, Adam; and in the case of Erasmus of Rotterdam for example in the question of merits and in the assertion that a spreading of the truth might be scandalous. Before presenting my conclusions I also deal with the diff erences in applied terminology and methodology of these two reform thinkers, which leads me to the question of the criterion of the truth. On the basis of these observationsI search for the key reasons for the disagreement between the two protagonists of this dispute and I evaluate the whole debate.

The aim of the article is twofold: (i) to document how what the author labels the “Principle of Reference” – viz. the claim that that which is not cannot be referred to – inspires both actualist and possibilist philosophical conceptions in the analytic tradition as well as in scholasticism, and (ii) to show how Duns Scotus’s rejection of the Principle allows us to see that there are two distinct and logically independent meanings of the actualism–possibilism distinction: viz. metaphysical actualism/…possibilism, and semantic actualism/possibilism. By way of an appendix, the author off ers some critical remarks on recent Czecho-Slovak debates about the ontological status of non-existents.

The systematic focus of twentieth century logic and analytic philosophy on semantic paradoxes prompted the rediscovery of the nearly six hundred years of scholastic research devoted to paradoxes. The present paper focuses on the following three branches of scholastic logic: 1. definitions of semantic paradox; 2. basic strategies of solving paradoxes; 3. scholastic classifications of solutions to paradoxes. Scholastic logicians analysed paradoxes from threebasic points of view: the point of view of paradox-generating inferences, the point of view of paradoxical sentence, and the point of view of the theoretical context of paradoxes. These partial analyses can be synthesised into a coherent approach, allowing for analysing different aspects of semantic paradox.