Sunday, November 3, 2013

Upcoming speaking engagements


This Saturday, November 9, I’ll be speaking at a symposium on “Thomas Aquinas and Philosophical Realism” which will be held at the Catholic Center at New York University.   The other speakers are James Brent, Candace Vogler, J. David Velleman, Thomas Joseph White, John Haldane, and William Jaworski.  More information here.

On Saturday, November 23, I’ll be speaking at a Catholic Apologetics Academy event at the Sacred Heart Retreat House in Alhambra, CA.  More details here.

On Saturday, December 7, I’ll be speaking at a colloquium on the theme “New Scholastic Meets Analytic Philosophy” at the Lindenthal-Institut, Cologne, Germany.  The other speakers are David Oderberg, Edmund Runggaldier, Erwin Tegtmeier, Stephen Mumford, and Uwe Meixner.  More information here

On Friday, January 31, I’ll be giving the Aquinas Lecture at Ave Maria University in Florida.  More information here.

17 comments:

  1. Dr. Feser,

    Will your papers be appearing in print at some point?

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  2. Will these be video-recorded and/or streamed live?
    thanks

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  3. New York is not out of reach, about 70 miles across the wastelands of Mordor, New Jersey. I will strive to attend, seeing as it is a) open to the public and b) free.

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  4. Well yes, you do have a tendency to bang on sometimes. But I for one have yet to be bored.

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  5. Wow, that's a heck of a line-up.

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  6. Yes! New York City! I will be there!

    By the way, reading "Aquinas" persuaded me to become a Thomist. I'm currently working my way through the "Selected Philosophical Writings" edited by Timothy McDermott. Dense, but profound. Christians who want to have an intellectually robust faith and comprehensive worldview simply MUST read Aquinas.

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  7. Prof. Feser,

    Escuse me for the off-topic, but would you recommend this book from one of the participants - 'Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction', by Stephen Mumford?

    Thanks!

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  8. I'm rather disappointed I can't make it to the NYC seminar having had to postpone my return to the city by about two weeks. The speakers and the characters that frequent this blog would have made it quite the event. As Max says: Missed it by that much.

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  9. "As Max says: Missed it by that much."

    Why, that must be the second greatest blog comment I've ever seen!

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  10. Great speech Dr. Feser. It was a pleasure to be able to hear you in person. I was the person who asked about quantum physics and causality. I am still, admittedly, a tad skeptical about rather the analogy alone is sufficient for proving the argument you gave (the coffee is on top of the table which is on top of the floor and so on). That is, I'm not sure that just showing how causality works in that case would be exactly how existence works. It's kind of unclear to me. It just seems different because what is sustaining the coffee's existence? It goes immediately to God? That wasn't how the causality argument worked though it seems. I think one might need to show how essence precedes existence and what not in order to truly prove the argument. Just my thoughts. What do you think? Is there something I'm missing? Any further insight would be great!

    Anyway, again, it was a pleasure seeing you. Keep up the great work! I always enjoy reading your work.

    ~Matthew

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  11. "Why, that must be the second greatest blog comment I've ever seen!"

    LOL. Jokes aside, I hope my comment didn't sound snide; it wasn't meant in that spirit.

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  12. "Why, that must be the second greatest blog comment I've ever seen!"

    LOL. Jokes aside, I hope my comment didn't sound snide; it wasn't meant in that spirit.

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  13. It didn't sound snide—just Smart.

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  14. Professor, with all due respect whilst I agree that abandoning the Scholastic philosophy of nature was a disaster I do not feel you have given Principle of Sufficient Reason proofs their due ( I have not read all your independent articles so I may be wronging you in this case )

    In previous lectures you have insinuated that the criticisms of Hume and Kant present a problem for this argument: yet the Humean and Kantian philosophies arise from independent epistemological problems – Nominalism, Representationalism and Psychologism, arguably Mechanism and the general confusion over parts and wholes – which need not arise.

    (This brings to mind a quip uttered against one of Sobel’s mediocre objections: To claim that something does not require a Principle of Sufficient Reason is incoherent since in order to explain to someone why this is so, in order to justify the statement, one would end up giving a Sufficient Reason for something’s lacking a Sufficient Reason. Appeals to Brute Facts are flatus vocii.)

    Regardless of whatever your final position on the Principal of Sufficient Reason is I hope your Aquinas Lecture sees print in the future.

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  15. @Scott, thanks for your detailed précis of the volume. Arguments for a return to a broadly Aristotelian philosophy of Nature are most welcome, though perhaps of less interest to me as the phrase ‘preaching to the converted’ comes to mind. At the moment I am very interested in the Scholastic Logic of Intentions, the relations and processes of the mind expressed as Ens Rationis in relation to Ens Reale, as it pre-empts the Kantian project and jumps ahead 500 years to clasp hand with Phenomenology. Having said that I probably will get a copy of this book after all.

    A lot of difficulties re Hylemorphism are due to the fact that strictly speaking there is no Matter/Mind binary in school metaphysics: Matter does not occupy a parallel place to that of Form as it only exists in and through the latter as a principal of individualisation and change. If one approaches the subjects solely with modern pre-conceptions one risks coming away with a mistaken impression with said metaphysics is a Monism and then having to flail randomly in deciding which variety it is. Even then a lot of professional philosophers come off badly as statements like ‘the intellectual alone has being’, when taken apart from the concept of Prime Matter as Pure Potentiality not to mention the distinction between objects of First and Second Intention which one will not garner from Aristotle’s works alone, would rather lead one to suppose Idealism rather that Materialism. At bottom these metaphysics are systems of Holism and dynamic unity and cannot be made to conform to Post-Cartesian Procrustianisms.

    The interesting point to make is that one could easily be both a Hylemorphist and a Substance Dualist, as were St. Bonaventure and many other medieval philosophers who upheld a forma corporalis theory. In fact a number of Bonaventure’s tenets could well have been part of the inspiration for Leibniz Pre-Established Harmony theory. One might of course claim that it is extravagant to appeal to a specific Divine Act to explain ther Mind/Body relationship, however to this the Hylemorphic Harmonist might claim that since we can establish the Divine Existence by independent reasoning and we already conceded that the creation of new soul derives from the Deity is it really so unreasonable to assume said soul might not be created in sync so to speak? Of course, the Pre-Established Harmony Theory runs into difficulties of its own, not least those involving free will, but it’s something to think about.

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  16. Curses! Pray excuse that last post – its author very foolishly navigated back to the blog via his History and didn’t look which entry it took him to!

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