Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Vinco on Feser in Philosophische Rundschau

German-speaking readers might be interested in Roberto Vinco’s article “Neo-Scholastic Metaphysics in the 21st Century: An Examination of the Perspective of Edward Feser,” in the latest issue of the journal Philosophische Rundschau.

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17 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2024 at 2:34 PM

    Danke. Vergessen Deutsch

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  2. AnonymousOctober 1, 2024 at 7:54 PM

    Ed, Your writings are getting wide readership. The only German Thomistic philosopher I know is Joseph Pieper, who books are in English.

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  3. AnonymousOctober 2, 2024 at 12:33 AM

    Speaking of German, one day there will be a book, a "Festschrift," essays in honor of Prof. Feser.

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  4. BillyOctober 2, 2024 at 4:01 AM

    Meine Frau ist vielleicht interessiert. Sie hat schon Five Proofs in deutsch gelesen. Aber mein deutsch ist jetzt nicht gut genug.

    Danke sehr.

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  5. Paul D. Van PeltOctober 2, 2024 at 5:51 AM

    I need to look that one up, before I search for a translation of the author's work. Neo-scholastic Metaphysics is unfamiliar.

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  6. Paul D. Van PeltOctober 2, 2024 at 7:40 AM

    I guess I might have known Davidson was important here. However, I am not a Davidson scholar. So many philosophers---so little time. Thanks, Dr.

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  7. Paul D. Van PeltOctober 2, 2024 at 11:33 AM

    So, why is the treatise in German? What is the motive?
    There is a blog, published in a Scandinavian language. My sense of that is also:why? Vinco does not sound German. If the work were in French, I might make sense of it. Spanish? Lo mismo, o, un poco--a veces. But not German, nien, or is that, nein, vous comprenez?

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  8. AnonymousOctober 2, 2024 at 9:55 PM

    Paul,
    Prof. Roberto Vinco is on the faculty of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He is fluent in English, Italian, French and German.

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  9. ficino4mlOctober 3, 2024 at 5:59 AM

    Vinco is Italian, but he has been teaching in Germany for years. He is now at Heidelberg. So his publications are mostly in German, and this paper is published in one of many German academic journals.

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  10. AnonymousOctober 3, 2024 at 10:09 AM

    It is not uncommon for European scholars to know multiple languages. That is less true in the USA, but many know at least two besides their native English. Prof. Don Prudlo of the Catholic Studies Center at the University of Tulsa and author of the best biography of St Thomas Aquinas in the English language, is proficient in French, German, Italian Greek and Latin.
    The Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig is proficient in French, German, Latin and Greek.

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  11. NormOctober 30, 2024 at 12:16 PM

    Hi Prof

    I can't shake the feeling that I might have irked you, given our political exchange.

    Anyways I thought I would switch it up a bit.

    I was wondering if you ever came across this article by Stephen Mumford called "Relations All The Way Down". I always thought it would be nice if you could discuss it someway.

    In it he responds to one particular objection to the question of there being Relations Without Relata.

    The objection was one you mentioned in Aristotle's Revenge as well,namely thinking of concrete objects themselves in terms of relations.

    Here Mumford mentions that OSR theorists will say ,concrete objects themselves can only be individuated in terms of relations. They give the example of the leaf, they posit that we can only individuate the leaf by contrasting it against some background, trees grass et. And this contrast is in effect a relation.

    Mumford quite sleekly retorts that even in that case we can only make sense of "leaf" and "background" of trees flower grass etc if there was some undivided whole (a landscape) to abstract these concepts from.

    This quite reminded me of the way you have also resisted reductionist attempts by Hume in regards to the book example (white expanse etc), The Whole is more fundamental then it's parts.

    Anyways what do you make of Mumford's reply? Do you think that it's a good reply?

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    Replies
    1. Edward FeserOctober 30, 2024 at 1:09 PM

      I can't shake the feeling that I might have irked you, given our political exchange.

      Not at all, Norm! No worries.

      I haven't read that Mumford article, but I'll look for it.

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    2. NormOctober 30, 2024 at 8:38 PM

      That's Kind of You Prof!

      Can't wait for your thoughts on the article, one day ;)

      Cheers

      Delete
    3. NormNovember 1, 2024 at 10:15 AM

      Hi Prof

      Just one last question on the subject of Ontic Structural Realism if it's not too much trouble.

      Another argument which I find effective while rebutting OSR and all other theories that posit "Everything is mathematical"
      is just by pointing out that qualitative features (qualia) aren't susceptible to mathematical description. And they are also the foundation of empirical science.

      So in effect, at the very least, the human being would have both qualitative and mathematical aspects.

      It would be a composite of mathematical and qualitative parts none of which entail each other.

      That would introduce contingency and ultimately God.

      There couldn't be an Aristotelian escape by distinguishing material amd formal cause, because being material requires change ,atleast in principle, on the Aristotelian picture. But mathematical structures are intrinsically changeless.

      So you are again stuck a contingently related composite of qualitative and mathematical form that would entail God

      One could go the panpsychist route of saying the mathematical structure is the structure of qualitative forms but that would bring with it all the problems of panpsychism.

      Would you consider it as a legitimate way of rebutting those kind of theories ?

      Ofcourse you can go even further by showing how change can't be denied, naive color realism etc.

      But just as a way of Getting to God, Is it sound ?

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    4. NormNovember 5, 2024 at 1:30 AM

      Prof :)

      Delete
    5. NormNovember 17, 2024 at 2:15 AM

      To supplement my argument above for mathematical structure alongside qualitative aspects (atleast in human beings) being a contingent composite that would ultimately require God as an explanation, I will add this short paragraph from Aristotle's Revenge,

      "Ontic structural realism cannot be correct, in part for reasons implicit in earlier chapters. I have argued that the existence of the experiences and cognitive processes of the conscious embodied subject entails the existence of change and thus of the actualization of potentiality, of final and efficient causality, and of substantial form and prime matter. Since all of that goes beyond what is captured in a description of the mathematical structure of nature, what has been said in earlier chapters suffices to show that there is more to the world than such structure. I have also argued against a Cartesian interpretation of the relationship between the conscious subject and the natural world, so that it will not do for an ontic structural realist even to hold that there is no more to the external, physical world than structure, even if there is more to the conscious subject than structure."

      Aristotle's Revenge

      Accordingly, because mathematical structures are mathematical, they are not susceptible to change even in principle, as such, it cannot by itself be the material cause of anything , since we know for sure given our experience upon which all empirical evidence depends and hence it cannot be coherently denied, that some mathematical structures exist alongside qualitative aspects. This would make those structures a contingent composite which would need to be explained, ultimately leading to an affirmation of God's existence.

      Hence anyone appealing to OSR
      or Max Tegmark's MUH to deny the existence of contingency and God is clearly mistaken

      It took me months of reading to formulate it this way, almost 8 months. But I am sure of it now.

      I hope my argument makes sense. If you could take a look at it Prof, I would be indebted.

      To anyone who sees this, Aristotle's Revenge by Prof Feser is one of the
      premier books of philosophy I heartily recommend it to anyone.

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    6. NormNovember 20, 2024 at 2:07 AM

      Actually turns out that Prof has already said exactly the same thing I have said above in his post
      "Materialism Subverts Itself".

      "The reason it does not rule such claims out is that to say that everything has such-and-such a mathematical structure does not entail that the nature of everything that exists is exhausted by a description of its mathematical structure. It could turn out that everything that exists has the mathematical structure that physics uncovers, but also has further properties, in addition to that, of which physics tells us nothing. That is what Russell thought, and it is what contemporary writers influenced by Russell (like David Chalmers and Galen Strawson) have also proposed. Now, if we allow that qualia can be among the intrinsic features of matter, then, as Chalmers notes, we end up with a position that is either panpsychist or property dualist. And a position that is compatible with panpsychism and property dualism is not the kind of thing one usually thinks of when one thinks of materialism."

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