Monday, December 29, 2014

Causality, pantheism, and deism

›
Agere sequitur esse (“action follows being” or “activity follows existence”) is a basic principle of Scholastic metaphysics.  The idea is ...
219 comments:
Friday, December 26, 2014

Martin and Murray on essence and existence

›
The real distinction between a thing’s essence and its existence is a key Thomistic metaphysical thesis, which I defend at length in Scho...
38 comments:
Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Christmastime reading for shut-ins

›
Just announced: The Institute for Thomistic Philosophy .  At Public Discourse , William Carroll gives us the scoop on Thomas Aqui...
21 comments:
Saturday, December 20, 2014

Knowing an ape from Adam

›
On questions about biological evolution, both the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and Thomist philosophers and theologians have ten...
368 comments:
Friday, December 12, 2014

Causality and radioactive decay

›
At the Catholic blog Vox Nova , mathematics professor David Cruz-Uribe writes : I… am currently working through the metaphysics o...
483 comments:
Friday, December 5, 2014

Working the net

›
The Daily Beast nominates Aristotle for a posthumous Nobel prize .  (Even Aristotle’s mistakes are interesting: Next time you see a E...
68 comments:
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Progressive dematerialization

›
In the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) tradition, it is the intellect, rather than sentience, that marks the divide between the corporeal...
69 comments:
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Interview with the metaphysician

›
Recently I was interviewed by two different websites about Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction .  Both interviews have...
142 comments:
Friday, November 21, 2014

Augustine on the immateriality of the mind

›
In Book 10, Chapter 10 of On the Trinity , St. Augustine argues for the immateriality of the mind.  You can find an older translation ...
213 comments:
Saturday, November 15, 2014

DSPT symposium papers online (Updated)

›
Last week’s symposium at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley was on Fr. Anselm Ramelow’s anthology God, Reaso...
157 comments:
Sunday, November 9, 2014

DSPT interviews (Updated)

›
Back from another very pleasant and profitable visit to the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley.  Many thanks to ...
30 comments:
Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Walking the web

›
Bishop Athanasius Schneider is interviewed about the recent Synod on the Family .  On the now notorious interim report: “This document...
40 comments:
Sunday, November 2, 2014

Voluntarism and PSR

›
Aquinas holds that “will follows upon intellect” ( Summa Theologiae I.19.1).  He means in part that anything with an intellect has a ...
196 comments:
Friday, October 24, 2014

Nudge nudge, wink wink

›
Suppose you go out on a blind date and a friend asks you how it went.  You pause and then answer flatly, with a slight smirk: “Well, I...
897 comments:
Thursday, October 16, 2014

Could a theist deny PSR?

›
We’ve been talking about the principle of sufficient reason (PSR).  It plays a key role in some arguments for the existence of God, w...
238 comments:
Friday, October 10, 2014

Della Rocca on PSR

›
The principle of sufficient reason (PSR), in a typical Neo-Scholastic formulation, states that “there is a sufficient reason or adequa...
595 comments:
Friday, October 3, 2014

Meta-comedy

›
While we’re on the subject of Steve Martin , consider the following passage from his memoir Born Standing Up .  Martin recounts the in...
186 comments:
Saturday, September 27, 2014

Thomas Aquinas, Henry Adams, Steve Martin

›
In his conceptual travelogue Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres -- first distributed privately in 1904, then published in 1913 -- histori...
52 comments:
Wednesday, September 24, 2014

DSPT Symposium

›
God, Reason and Reality is a new anthology edited by Anselm Ramelow.  In addition to Fr. Ramelow, the contributors include Robert Sok...
32 comments: