Development of Doctrine IV

Both here and at Sacramentum Vitae, I’ve been involved in a long-running debate about the development of doctrine with conservative scholars from each of the three major Christian traditions.  (By ‘conservative’ I mean those who believe that the “faith once given to the saints” is definitive, fully and publicly identifiable in Tradition and Scripture, [...]

Good thing for the Scholastics…

A blogger named unBeguiled, with whom I have interacted before (e.g., concerning nothingness and existence), recently cited page 109 Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition:
“Angels, not being material, are pure forms or essences on Aquinas’s view, but even with them their essence needs to be combined with existence in order for them to be real, so [...]

Beware the Magnevonian Myth!

In an earlier post, “Actions and events…” (at my FCA blog but also available here), I described three bodily motions (a., b, and c.), which, though they all look the same and produce the same effects, are not the same action at all. I claimed that intentionality, as a non-physical ascription of formal coherence, needs [...]

The steps you take are not the steps taking you…

Imagine you are walking on a mildly populated sidewalk downtown one afternoon. You walk from your office, to the elevator, then out the doors, along Park Street, turn onto Haven Street, and finally reach Bends (on step #N), a local sub shop. It is a logical necessity, that at every point along your way, you [...]

Desire and de-desire…

You are sitting at a coffee shop (hopefully not Starbucks?) when you begin to eavesdrop on two philosophy grad students bickering.
“A person is free to act as he desires,” says the one, wearing an orange sweat shirt and blue jeans, “but he is not free to choose his desires. He may choose to suppress some [...]

I love laughing when I read…

“In Part III, we begin the study of philosophy itself from the perspective of cognitive science. We apply these analytical methods to important moments in the history of philosophy: Greek metaphysics, including the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle [ca. 600-300 BC]; [_________________________; ] Descartes’s theory of mind and Enlightenment faculty psychology [ca. 1500-1800 AD]; Kant’s moral [...]

Apophatic humility…

In Scholastic theology, three methods of analogical inquiry were used in discussion of God: the via causalitatis, the via remotionis, and the via eminentiae (or, excellentiae). St. Thomas, for instance, treads the via causalitatis in the first ten or so chapters of the Summa Contra Gentes, where he argues from the effects of the Creator [...]

Alvin Plantinga vs. Daniel Dennett

Prosblogion has a fascinating account (with many posted comments) of the “debate” last month (really a paper and response with questions) between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett on the compatibility of theism with science. Highly recommended reading.