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32Spinoza à la mode: A defence of Spinozistic anti-pluralismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1). 1997.This Article does not have an abstract
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32Kant’s ‘Critical’ RationalismIdealistic Studies 22 (2): 107-121. 1992.Matter, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, plays a prototypical version of a rôle that recurs, refracted through the domestic preoccupations of each age, in metaphysical analyses of the constitution of the real. After identifying the rôle, I shall trace a developmental arc of philosophical treatment from Aristotle through the Cartesian period to Kant. The mature Kantian view of the rôle—the ‘critical’ view—is, I maintain, a reversion to the Aristotelian position. It is not however a simple reversion. I…Read more
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31Israelite IdolPhilosophy and Theology 19 (1-2): 57-78. 2007.The Bible ridicules idolaters for bowing down to sticks and stones. Since idolaters worship what the sticks and stones stand for, not the sticks and stones themselves, isn’t the biblical position confused? At the basis of the Bible’s consistent refusal to observe the preceding distinction are found the conceptual underpinnings of its critique of idolatry. Men and women alone among creatures are inspired with God’s breath. Men and women alone among creatures, that is, are like God. They alone amo…Read more
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29Cartesian Substances as Modal TotalitiesDialogue 17 (2): 320-343. 1978.I. Analytic interpretation of Descartes' argument for a substantial distinction between mind and body works within a framework of assumptions – which is broadly Aristotelian – concerning the character of the Cartesian categories of substance, essence, and mode. Relying on a series of texts concerning the mind/body distinction which is usually passed over by interpreters, I will develop and draw out the implications of a different – a Platonic – view of these categories.
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27His Royal I-nessPhilosophy and Theology 32 (1-2): 81-91. 2020.The theology of the (Hebrew) Bible, as set out in the Torah’s foundational parts, answers the question “What am I?” not the question “Why is there a world?” So the principle that the Bible’s deity, God, represents, the principle of a category of being not recognized in the pagan thinking whose basic elements Greek philosophy systematizes, first enters “In the day that . . . the Lord God formed [the] man,” not “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” The admonition to place …Read more
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27Persons are the only Creatures: Non‐Naturalism in the BibleHeythrop Journal 61 (6): 951-963. 2020.The Heythrop Journal, EarlyView.
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27Cartesian UncertaintyGrazer Philosophische Studien 27 (1): 101-124. 1986.For placing the contrast of certainty and uncertainty at the philosophical center, Descartes is charged with Michael Dummett with mistakenly subordinating the study of language and meaning to epistemology. But Dummett's knowledge-theoretic reading of the certainty/uncertainty duality is as erroneous as the tradition it inherits is long. The Cartesian demand for certainty and critique of uncertainty in mature writings like the Meditations has a definite semantic character. Cartesian uncertainty, …Read more
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26Berkeley and CognitionPhilosophy 56 (216). 1981.In ‘Berkeley and God’, Jonathan Bennett diagnoses Berkeley's intermittent advocacy of the proposition that physical things ‘do sometimes exist when not perceived by any human spirit’ by pinning on him the invalid argument, vitiated by the ambiguity of ‘depend’, from all ideas depend on some spirit or other, via some sensible ideas do not depend on these spirits themselves, to some ideas depend on non-finite spirits
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25Semantic Determinacy and OntologyIdealistic Studies 7 (2): 109-131. 1977.The notion of individuation has both a semantic and an ontological face. More exactly, the claim can be defended that individuation has a proprietary linguistic or conceptual aspect as distinct from an ontological one. Ontologists such as W. V. Quine would credit neither the possibility of such a divergence nor the intelligibility of its proposal. The ontology of a language, for Quine, is inseparable from its individuative resources, mechanisms such as identity, pluralization, pronouns, and so f…Read more
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25The Palinode Ot the Analyst Rationality and Self in the EuthyphroPhilosophical Inquiry 16 (3-4): 38-55. 1994.
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23Artificial Respiration What does God really do in the beginning?New Blackfriars 99 (1083): 578-600. 2018.
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22The Practical WorldIdealistic Studies 29 (1-2): 1-31. 1999.'Everything,' Kant remarks, 'gravitates ultimately towards the practical.' Judging by 'everything,' Kant is fixing on some feature of reality that he regards as invariant across times, places, and people. Judging by 'ultimately,' Kant believes that the feature yields itself up only to penetrative philosophical scrutiny. The remark is, I believe, a key to 'the basic problem confronting any reader of [Kant],' his idealism.
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20Structure and the interpretation of classical modern metaphysicsMetaphilosophy 18 (3-4): 270-287. 1987.