Paul Symington - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Paul Symington
On Determining What There is, 2010
The Review of Metaphysics
A LEAN HYLOMORPHISM STANDS as a metaphysical holy grail. It would provide an ontology of the comp... more A LEAN HYLOMORPHISM STANDS as a metaphysical holy grail. It would provide an ontology of the composition of material substances that would look materialistic-and so friendly to naturalist interests-but with the extra goodies of dualism or idealism. 1 I believe that Aquinas's hylomorphism-as presented in his On Being and Essence 2-is in many ways successful in providing such a lean hylomorphism. To wit, Aquinas viewed prime matter as both a fundamental principle of individuation for material things as well as pure potency to other actualities in the system as a whole. 3 As I interpret Aquinas's view, therefore, a given substance is not a third thing constituted by its prime matter but is in fact identical with it. However, on the long view of philosophy, Aquinas's view of prime matter has been neglected as a dead option for contemporary
On Determining What There is, 2010
On Determining What There is, 2010
In this paper, I present a categorial theory of meaning which asserts that the meaning of a sente... more In this paper, I present a categorial theory of meaning which asserts that the meaning of a sentence is the function from the actualization of some potentiality or the potentiality of some actuality to the truth of the sentence. I argue that it builds on the virtues of David Lewis’s Possible World Semantics but advances beyond problems that Lewis’s theory faces with its distinctly Aristotelian turn toward actuality and potentiality
On Determining What There is, 2010
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2015
In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of provi... more In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of providing an epistemic ground for predicating names of God analogously. To this task, I address a semantic/epistemic problem, which concludes that the doctrine of analogy lacks epistemological grounding insofar as it presupposes a prior understanding of God in order to sufficiently alter a given concept to be proportionate to God. In hopes of avoiding this conclusion, I introduce Aquinas's specifically semantic aspects that follow after the real distinction between a thing's esse and its essence or form in the context of analogy and show that the ratio of a term can be altered in a way proportionate to a consideration of the mode of being of God.
The Review of Metaphysics, Dec 1, 2012
ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cl... more ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cloth, $45.00--The purpose of this targeted work is to examine a phenomenological approach to epistemology, and specifically, to address the relation between "reality," "phenomena" and "appearance" in light of the enduring question of how it is possible to grasp reality as such. Rockmore argues that phenomenology, broadly conceived, extends beyond Husserl importantly back to Kant. He argues that Husserl's, Heidegger's, and Merleau-Ponty's so-called nonconstructivist approaches to phenomenology fail to solve this problem and suggests that Kant's "constructivist strategy" is more effective in addressing it. The major view espoused in nonconstructivist phenomenological accounts is that reality is knowable because it appears. Constructivism--the view "that a minimal conditional of knowledge is that the cognitive subject must 'construct' the cognitive subject"--"turns away from a claim to know the way the world is in itself for a claim to know whatever is given in experience." Contrary to constructivism is representationalism, in which phenomena and appearances (which are run together) are understood to represent reality in itself. Rockmore recommends phenomenological approaches to epistemology to follow the spirit of the critical philosophy and constructivism. This can be done by looking to Hegel, who stresses that "knowledge does not concern the world in itself but the world for us, which we only know through conscious phenomena," which forces us to grapple with the problem of knowledge as lying "in understanding how 'we' construct phenomenon in the interaction between [finite] human beings and situated within the historical process in which we come to know the world and ourselves." In the first chapter, Rockmore focuses on the interface of Plato and Kant with respect to the role that ideas play in relation to knowledge. There is an ultimate conflict between Plato and phenomenology insofar as Platonism presupposes that "the real does not and cannot appear in cognizable form" because Plato, although he admits of reasoning from cause to effect, denies that one can infer any causes from effects; specifically, he denies that one can infer something about reality--the source of all things--from appearances. Ideas conceived of by the moderns were consistent with a representationalist theory of knowledge due in part to their causal theory of perception, which understands things to cause ideas, and with it the implication that reality manifests itself. Rockmore canvasses the ongoing debate about ideas among moderns, who work in their own context with the specter of phenomena, appearance, and reality in the background. In chapter two, Rockmore depicts Kant's movement from the environs of the causal theory of perception and its corresponding representational theory of knowledge to his descriptive phenomenology and constructivism. Kant's Copernican revolution, in its attempt at saving the de facto intelligibility of the objective order in experience, is consistent with phenomenology and Platonism. Concerning the former, Kant is said to be the first to use the term philosophically, understanding it to be "a theory that explains how within the realm of material natural science empirical phenomena become experience." Concerning the latter, Kant's philosophy eschews the real as foreign to our experience. Next, in chapter three, Rockmore examines Hegel as an important representative of post-Kantian critical philosophy and phenomenology. Hegel's main intent is developing the spirit of Kant's philosophy but he also stresses the importance of historical perspective. …
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2007
Philosophy Today, 2006
Richard Kearney is a contemporary continental philosopher with interests in the divine beyond the... more Richard Kearney is a contemporary continental philosopher with interests in the divine beyond the onto-theological.1 In The God Who May Be, Kearney is interested in an eschatological hermeneutic of God rather than a traditional metaphysical interpretation. His justification for such a conceptualization of God is drawn from sacred scriptures of various religious faiths-but in this work, predominantly Christian and Jewish. Echoing Heidegger's claim in the introduction to Being and Time that possibility stands higher than actuality,2 Kearney's eschatological hermeneutic yields an onto-eschatological position of God as possibility. That is, God neither is nor is not but may be. Kearney asserts that such an understanding of God most appropriately resolves some abrasive points between theistic and ethical notions. For instance, he suggests that an onto-eschatological conception of God satisfies the problem of theodicy more aptly than a traditional metaphysical understanding of God as First Cause, Unmoved Mover, etc.3 The issue of theodicy is alleviated when God is reinterpreted as becoming possible within and through just human acts. Thus, Kearney's somewhat philosophically iconoclastic interpretation of God has sought to reassert a God who has been subverted and muted by traditional metaphysics in favor of one "more attuned to the original biblical context of meaning."4 Essentially, Kearney's God of onto-eschatologically is onto-temporal. Such a God's very being is realized as he comes meaningfully alongside his beloved ones in an interplay of anticipation and desire into the future. An onto-eschatological God is not reducible to a static creative and giving act that moved once and finally. Rather, an onto-eschatological God is the surprising and donological God of dynamic and regenerative revelation depicted in sacred scriptures, stories and experiences. Such an interpretation seeks to establish a perpetually receptive mindset toward the infinity and movement of God that is beyond metaphysical prejudgments. William James, not unlike a legion of philosophers, was interested in examining questions of God, ethics and knowledge. Interestingly, as I hope to show, James' position on such issues is quite similar to the results of Keamey's hermeneutic. This is particularly interesting since these thinkers come from quite different philosophical traditions: Kearney from a European phenomenological/ hermeneutical method of thought, and James from an American empirico-pragmatist background. However, as an introductory point of commonality, I believe that attention to the many facts and facets of human experience is responsible for both thinkers bringing out their notions of God and the ethical from the abstracted Absolute or onto-theological. It is their unswerving vigilance to real-time positive effects of the religious in human life on the one hand, and the horrible facts of human atrocity on the other hand, that gives impetus to their conclusion that God's nature exists as possibility. The particular interest of this essay is to offer a comparison of these philosopher's positions with special interest regarding the nature of the ethical and the divine. Furthermore, by way of this fruitful comparison, I will assert that James' position can serve to philosophically amplify Kearney's interpretation of the divine possible and avoid some problems that Kearney runs up against. Specifically, the amplification flows from what I will call James' eschatological notion of truth (which I will qualify below). I will suggest that given similar approaches to the ethical and the divine between the two thinkers, Kearney can go beyond a long-standing tension between the ontological and eschatological in the contemporary continental tradition. That is, Kearney can supplement his ontological characterization of God as Possest by asserting with James an eschatological conception of truth itself and thereby address the problematic tendency in the contemporary continental context to oppose the ontological with the eschatological. …
Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, 2008
Providing a philosophical justification for the specific number and identity of Aristotle's categ... more Providing a philosophical justification for the specific number and identity of Aristotle's categories is a task that dates back at least to Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle 's Categories (ca. 6th century A.D.).' Scholastics from the thirteenth century onward addressed this issue, which they called ntfui.entia pratdicamentarum, mostly in commentaries on Aristotle's Catcgoies! Two related questions were pertinent. The first asked whether Aristotle provided an adequate list of categories and the second asked whether a philosophical justification could be given for the specific items on the list.itAlthough the latter task predates Albertus Magnus (ca. l20B B0), he is credited as being the first scholastic to attempt it.t Albertus established a method of arriving at a list of the I Rrr :r recent translation ol' Simplicius's commcntary on Aristotle's Calegties, sct Simplicius: On Aistotb'.r Cute.Eia 1-1, trans. Michacl Chasc (Ithaca, 2003). Scc csp. pp. 74 9t. ' Robcrt Andrcws idcntiflcs othcr tcxts that olfcrcd opportunity fbr mcdieval commcn{rrtors to addrcss the topic of thc sulf'ximtia, such :rs Aristotle's Maaplgtsiu Y, PlV"tiu lll, and Topics I, in "Question Commentarics on thc Catzgorfu.s in thc Thirteenth Ccntury" Melioetto 26 (2001), 292. Although Aquinas may be thc {irst scholastic to rclcr to Simplicius, hc docs not sccm to bc {amiliar with Simplicius's.justilic:rtion of' thc numbcr and idcntity of thc catcgories. H<>wcvrr, R:rdulphus Brit<> shows {anriliarity with Simplicius's treatmcnt. Scc Willianr E. McMahon, "Radulphus Brito on the Suflicie ncy ol' rhe Categorie.s," Cahint de I'in;titut lu moyen'Age grec et ktin 39 (l99l'1, 86. For a topical discussion of thc vurrious philosophic:rl qucstions gcneratcd around Aristotlc's Categoie.s, see Jorge J. E. Gracia and Lloyd Ncwton, "Mcdieval Thcorics ol' Cnkgories," Sran/iml Encyckpetlia o/ Philosoltllt, l4 April 2006, <http://plato.stanlord. cd u,/ c n trics/ mc dieval-C atzgoies > (8 Au gu st 2006). ' Se e Giorgio Pini, "Scotus on Dcducing Aristotle 's Catcsorics," Lt trarktion m&lihtalzs des Catzgoias (XII'-X' sildzs): XIIIe Symltosium urolilm de kgil1ue et tle simanhque midianlt, cds.
Quaestiones Disputatae, 2014
Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, 2010
Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indi... more Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indicates realignment with a long tradition in the history of philosophy by Aristotle, medieval scholastics, Kant, Husserl, and Ryle. There is much to recommend an approach to metaphysics that includes categorial investigations, not the least of which is the intuitively plausible and perennial notion that things with which we are acquainted ought to be understood as having commonalities among them. Metaphysics has been conceived as a discipline that, among other things, seeks to investigate common features of reality, thought, or language. It seeks to establish such features tout court in such a way that any entity whatsoever will either have a general feature in common with other entities or will itself be the category through which these entities are understood in common. In addition, it is an oft-believed metaphysical view that some such features are presupposed by any correct understanding of the less general features under which entities are investigated or known. 3 For example, although biologists mapping the human genome consider their subject matter in relation to an organism, they presuppose that their subject of investigation is individual. But individuality is a feature common to entities that is not considered by biologists. In this context, an aim of metaphysics would be to determine whether "individuality" is a general feature of entities, or, if it is not, how it can be accounted for by other more general features.
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2011
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2007
This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both... more This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both meaning and being. I disagree with Ralph McInerny's understanding of how things are named through concepts and argue that McInerny's account does not allow for the thing represented by the name to be known in itself. In his understanding of analogy, only ideas of things may be known. This results in a wholesale inability to name things at all and thereby forces McInerny to relegate naming to a purely logical concern. As a consequence, for McInerny, since naming becomes only a logical concern, being itself cannot be known as analogous according to being and meaning since naming only involves the naming of ideas, not of things.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2013
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2006
This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed... more This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed account of Freud's understanding of psychical structure and his deterministic psycho-biological presuppositions, Lonergan's understanding of psychical structure in relation to patterns of experience is discussed. As opposed to Freud's theory, which is based on an imaginative synthesis of the classical laws of natural science, Lonergan considers psychical and organic function as concretely integrated in human functionality according to probabilistic schemes of recurrence. Consequently, Lonergan offers a theory of the psychological problems of repression and inhibition not primarily as functions of subverted organic desires, but more properly according to the functioning of intellectual bias. Lonergan thereby provides a more comprehensive understanding of the unity of the human self at the psychical level.
On Determining What There is, 2010
The Review of Metaphysics
A LEAN HYLOMORPHISM STANDS as a metaphysical holy grail. It would provide an ontology of the comp... more A LEAN HYLOMORPHISM STANDS as a metaphysical holy grail. It would provide an ontology of the composition of material substances that would look materialistic-and so friendly to naturalist interests-but with the extra goodies of dualism or idealism. 1 I believe that Aquinas's hylomorphism-as presented in his On Being and Essence 2-is in many ways successful in providing such a lean hylomorphism. To wit, Aquinas viewed prime matter as both a fundamental principle of individuation for material things as well as pure potency to other actualities in the system as a whole. 3 As I interpret Aquinas's view, therefore, a given substance is not a third thing constituted by its prime matter but is in fact identical with it. However, on the long view of philosophy, Aquinas's view of prime matter has been neglected as a dead option for contemporary
On Determining What There is, 2010
On Determining What There is, 2010
In this paper, I present a categorial theory of meaning which asserts that the meaning of a sente... more In this paper, I present a categorial theory of meaning which asserts that the meaning of a sentence is the function from the actualization of some potentiality or the potentiality of some actuality to the truth of the sentence. I argue that it builds on the virtues of David Lewis’s Possible World Semantics but advances beyond problems that Lewis’s theory faces with its distinctly Aristotelian turn toward actuality and potentiality
On Determining What There is, 2010
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2015
In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of provi... more In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of providing an epistemic ground for predicating names of God analogously. To this task, I address a semantic/epistemic problem, which concludes that the doctrine of analogy lacks epistemological grounding insofar as it presupposes a prior understanding of God in order to sufficiently alter a given concept to be proportionate to God. In hopes of avoiding this conclusion, I introduce Aquinas's specifically semantic aspects that follow after the real distinction between a thing's esse and its essence or form in the context of analogy and show that the ratio of a term can be altered in a way proportionate to a consideration of the mode of being of God.
The Review of Metaphysics, Dec 1, 2012
ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cl... more ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cloth, $45.00--The purpose of this targeted work is to examine a phenomenological approach to epistemology, and specifically, to address the relation between "reality," "phenomena" and "appearance" in light of the enduring question of how it is possible to grasp reality as such. Rockmore argues that phenomenology, broadly conceived, extends beyond Husserl importantly back to Kant. He argues that Husserl's, Heidegger's, and Merleau-Ponty's so-called nonconstructivist approaches to phenomenology fail to solve this problem and suggests that Kant's "constructivist strategy" is more effective in addressing it. The major view espoused in nonconstructivist phenomenological accounts is that reality is knowable because it appears. Constructivism--the view "that a minimal conditional of knowledge is that the cognitive subject must 'construct' the cognitive subject"--"turns away from a claim to know the way the world is in itself for a claim to know whatever is given in experience." Contrary to constructivism is representationalism, in which phenomena and appearances (which are run together) are understood to represent reality in itself. Rockmore recommends phenomenological approaches to epistemology to follow the spirit of the critical philosophy and constructivism. This can be done by looking to Hegel, who stresses that "knowledge does not concern the world in itself but the world for us, which we only know through conscious phenomena," which forces us to grapple with the problem of knowledge as lying "in understanding how 'we' construct phenomenon in the interaction between [finite] human beings and situated within the historical process in which we come to know the world and ourselves." In the first chapter, Rockmore focuses on the interface of Plato and Kant with respect to the role that ideas play in relation to knowledge. There is an ultimate conflict between Plato and phenomenology insofar as Platonism presupposes that "the real does not and cannot appear in cognizable form" because Plato, although he admits of reasoning from cause to effect, denies that one can infer any causes from effects; specifically, he denies that one can infer something about reality--the source of all things--from appearances. Ideas conceived of by the moderns were consistent with a representationalist theory of knowledge due in part to their causal theory of perception, which understands things to cause ideas, and with it the implication that reality manifests itself. Rockmore canvasses the ongoing debate about ideas among moderns, who work in their own context with the specter of phenomena, appearance, and reality in the background. In chapter two, Rockmore depicts Kant's movement from the environs of the causal theory of perception and its corresponding representational theory of knowledge to his descriptive phenomenology and constructivism. Kant's Copernican revolution, in its attempt at saving the de facto intelligibility of the objective order in experience, is consistent with phenomenology and Platonism. Concerning the former, Kant is said to be the first to use the term philosophically, understanding it to be "a theory that explains how within the realm of material natural science empirical phenomena become experience." Concerning the latter, Kant's philosophy eschews the real as foreign to our experience. Next, in chapter three, Rockmore examines Hegel as an important representative of post-Kantian critical philosophy and phenomenology. Hegel's main intent is developing the spirit of Kant's philosophy but he also stresses the importance of historical perspective. …
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2007
Philosophy Today, 2006
Richard Kearney is a contemporary continental philosopher with interests in the divine beyond the... more Richard Kearney is a contemporary continental philosopher with interests in the divine beyond the onto-theological.1 In The God Who May Be, Kearney is interested in an eschatological hermeneutic of God rather than a traditional metaphysical interpretation. His justification for such a conceptualization of God is drawn from sacred scriptures of various religious faiths-but in this work, predominantly Christian and Jewish. Echoing Heidegger's claim in the introduction to Being and Time that possibility stands higher than actuality,2 Kearney's eschatological hermeneutic yields an onto-eschatological position of God as possibility. That is, God neither is nor is not but may be. Kearney asserts that such an understanding of God most appropriately resolves some abrasive points between theistic and ethical notions. For instance, he suggests that an onto-eschatological conception of God satisfies the problem of theodicy more aptly than a traditional metaphysical understanding of God as First Cause, Unmoved Mover, etc.3 The issue of theodicy is alleviated when God is reinterpreted as becoming possible within and through just human acts. Thus, Kearney's somewhat philosophically iconoclastic interpretation of God has sought to reassert a God who has been subverted and muted by traditional metaphysics in favor of one "more attuned to the original biblical context of meaning."4 Essentially, Kearney's God of onto-eschatologically is onto-temporal. Such a God's very being is realized as he comes meaningfully alongside his beloved ones in an interplay of anticipation and desire into the future. An onto-eschatological God is not reducible to a static creative and giving act that moved once and finally. Rather, an onto-eschatological God is the surprising and donological God of dynamic and regenerative revelation depicted in sacred scriptures, stories and experiences. Such an interpretation seeks to establish a perpetually receptive mindset toward the infinity and movement of God that is beyond metaphysical prejudgments. William James, not unlike a legion of philosophers, was interested in examining questions of God, ethics and knowledge. Interestingly, as I hope to show, James' position on such issues is quite similar to the results of Keamey's hermeneutic. This is particularly interesting since these thinkers come from quite different philosophical traditions: Kearney from a European phenomenological/ hermeneutical method of thought, and James from an American empirico-pragmatist background. However, as an introductory point of commonality, I believe that attention to the many facts and facets of human experience is responsible for both thinkers bringing out their notions of God and the ethical from the abstracted Absolute or onto-theological. It is their unswerving vigilance to real-time positive effects of the religious in human life on the one hand, and the horrible facts of human atrocity on the other hand, that gives impetus to their conclusion that God's nature exists as possibility. The particular interest of this essay is to offer a comparison of these philosopher's positions with special interest regarding the nature of the ethical and the divine. Furthermore, by way of this fruitful comparison, I will assert that James' position can serve to philosophically amplify Kearney's interpretation of the divine possible and avoid some problems that Kearney runs up against. Specifically, the amplification flows from what I will call James' eschatological notion of truth (which I will qualify below). I will suggest that given similar approaches to the ethical and the divine between the two thinkers, Kearney can go beyond a long-standing tension between the ontological and eschatological in the contemporary continental tradition. That is, Kearney can supplement his ontological characterization of God as Possest by asserting with James an eschatological conception of truth itself and thereby address the problematic tendency in the contemporary continental context to oppose the ontological with the eschatological. …
Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, 2008
Providing a philosophical justification for the specific number and identity of Aristotle's categ... more Providing a philosophical justification for the specific number and identity of Aristotle's categories is a task that dates back at least to Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle 's Categories (ca. 6th century A.D.).' Scholastics from the thirteenth century onward addressed this issue, which they called ntfui.entia pratdicamentarum, mostly in commentaries on Aristotle's Catcgoies! Two related questions were pertinent. The first asked whether Aristotle provided an adequate list of categories and the second asked whether a philosophical justification could be given for the specific items on the list.itAlthough the latter task predates Albertus Magnus (ca. l20B B0), he is credited as being the first scholastic to attempt it.t Albertus established a method of arriving at a list of the I Rrr :r recent translation ol' Simplicius's commcntary on Aristotle's Calegties, sct Simplicius: On Aistotb'.r Cute.Eia 1-1, trans. Michacl Chasc (Ithaca, 2003). Scc csp. pp. 74 9t. ' Robcrt Andrcws idcntiflcs othcr tcxts that olfcrcd opportunity fbr mcdieval commcn{rrtors to addrcss the topic of thc sulf'ximtia, such :rs Aristotle's Maaplgtsiu Y, PlV"tiu lll, and Topics I, in "Question Commentarics on thc Catzgorfu.s in thc Thirteenth Ccntury" Melioetto 26 (2001), 292. Although Aquinas may be thc {irst scholastic to rclcr to Simplicius, hc docs not sccm to bc {amiliar with Simplicius's.justilic:rtion of' thc numbcr and idcntity of thc catcgories. H<>wcvrr, R:rdulphus Brit<> shows {anriliarity with Simplicius's treatmcnt. Scc Willianr E. McMahon, "Radulphus Brito on the Suflicie ncy ol' rhe Categorie.s," Cahint de I'in;titut lu moyen'Age grec et ktin 39 (l99l'1, 86. For a topical discussion of thc vurrious philosophic:rl qucstions gcneratcd around Aristotlc's Categoie.s, see Jorge J. E. Gracia and Lloyd Ncwton, "Mcdieval Thcorics ol' Cnkgories," Sran/iml Encyckpetlia o/ Philosoltllt, l4 April 2006, <http://plato.stanlord. cd u,/ c n trics/ mc dieval-C atzgoies > (8 Au gu st 2006). ' Se e Giorgio Pini, "Scotus on Dcducing Aristotle 's Catcsorics," Lt trarktion m&lihtalzs des Catzgoias (XII'-X' sildzs): XIIIe Symltosium urolilm de kgil1ue et tle simanhque midianlt, cds.
Quaestiones Disputatae, 2014
Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, 2010
Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indi... more Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indicates realignment with a long tradition in the history of philosophy by Aristotle, medieval scholastics, Kant, Husserl, and Ryle. There is much to recommend an approach to metaphysics that includes categorial investigations, not the least of which is the intuitively plausible and perennial notion that things with which we are acquainted ought to be understood as having commonalities among them. Metaphysics has been conceived as a discipline that, among other things, seeks to investigate common features of reality, thought, or language. It seeks to establish such features tout court in such a way that any entity whatsoever will either have a general feature in common with other entities or will itself be the category through which these entities are understood in common. In addition, it is an oft-believed metaphysical view that some such features are presupposed by any correct understanding of the less general features under which entities are investigated or known. 3 For example, although biologists mapping the human genome consider their subject matter in relation to an organism, they presuppose that their subject of investigation is individual. But individuality is a feature common to entities that is not considered by biologists. In this context, an aim of metaphysics would be to determine whether "individuality" is a general feature of entities, or, if it is not, how it can be accounted for by other more general features.
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2011
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2007
This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both... more This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both meaning and being. I disagree with Ralph McInerny's understanding of how things are named through concepts and argue that McInerny's account does not allow for the thing represented by the name to be known in itself. In his understanding of analogy, only ideas of things may be known. This results in a wholesale inability to name things at all and thereby forces McInerny to relegate naming to a purely logical concern. As a consequence, for McInerny, since naming becomes only a logical concern, being itself cannot be known as analogous according to being and meaning since naming only involves the naming of ideas, not of things.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2013
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2006
This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed... more This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed account of Freud's understanding of psychical structure and his deterministic psycho-biological presuppositions, Lonergan's understanding of psychical structure in relation to patterns of experience is discussed. As opposed to Freud's theory, which is based on an imaginative synthesis of the classical laws of natural science, Lonergan considers psychical and organic function as concretely integrated in human functionality according to probabilistic schemes of recurrence. Consequently, Lonergan offers a theory of the psychological problems of repression and inhibition not primarily as functions of subverted organic desires, but more properly according to the functioning of intellectual bias. Lonergan thereby provides a more comprehensive understanding of the unity of the human self at the psychical level.