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32Linguistic Apprehension as Incidental Sensation in Thomas AquinasProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84 179-196. 2010.In this paper I will delineate the psychological operations and faculties required for linguistic apprehension within a Thomistic psychology. This will require first identifying the proper object of linguistic apprehension, which will then allow me to specify the distinct operations and faculties necessary for linguisticapprehension. I will argue that the semantic value of any linguistic term is a type of incidental sensible and that its cognitive apprehension is a type of incidentalsensation. H…Read more
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38A Heuristic for Thomist Philosophical Anthropology: Integrating Commonsense, Experiential, Experimental, and Metaphysical PsychologiesAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2): 163-213. 2022.In this study, I outline a heuristic for Thomist philosophical anthropology. In the first part, I introduce the major heuristics employed by Aquinas to establish the objects, operations, powers, and nature of his anthropology. I then identity major lacunae in his anthropology. In the second part, I show how an integrated approach to commonsense, experiential, experimental, and metaphysical psychologies can fill these lacunae and contribute to the enquiries of a contemporary Thomist philosophical…Read more
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24Is Philosophy of Nature Irrelevant?Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. forthcoming.
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65In Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing Daniel De Haan explicates the central argument of Avicenna’s metaphysical masterpiece. De Haan argues that the most fundamental primary notion in Avicenna’s metaphysics is neither being nor thing but is the necessary ( wājib), which Avicenna employs to demonstrate the existence and true-nature of the divine necessary existence in itself. This conclusion is established through a systematic investigation of h…Read more
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487After Survivalism and Corruptionism: Separated Souls as Incomplete PersonsQuaestiones Disputatae 10 (2): 161-176. 2020.Thomas Aquinas consistently defended the thesis that the separated rational soul that results from a human person’s death is not a person. Nevertheless, what has emerged in recent decades is a sophisticated disputed question between “survivalists” and “corruptionists” concerning the personhood of the separated soul that has left us with intractable disagreements wherein neither side seems able to convince the other. In our contribution to this disputed question, we present a digest of an unconsi…Read more
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37This thesis is concerned with answering the question, what is the central argument of Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing that brings its opening ontological approach to the subject of first philosophy to its ultimate theological goal and conclusion? This dissertation contends that it is the function of the fundamental scientific first principles of metaphysics, and in particular the fundamental primary notion necessary, to provide the intelligible link that Avicenna employs to demonstrate the…Read more
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39McGilchrist’s hemispheric homunculiReligion, Brain and Behavior 9 (4): 368-379. 2019.In the target article, Iain McGilchrist draws upon his work, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (=ME), to develop the relevance of its central claims to religion. Here and elsewhere McGilchrist contends, contrary to some critics, that his construal of the divided brain hypothesis (=DBH) does not make the fundamental philosophical error which is known as the homunculus fallacy. The critics’ charge is this: McGilchrist’s DBH purports to explain certa…Read more
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302Philosophical Hazards in the Neuroscience of ReligionIn Frazer Watts & Alasdair Coles (eds.), Neurology and Religion, Cambridge University Press. pp. 48-70. 2019.I am tasked with addressing philosophical hazards in the neuroscientific study of religion. As a philosopher concerned with the well-being of neuroscientists studying religion, I am inclined to begin with the philosophical hazards of philosophy. I am well aware of the extraordinary difficulties of both tasks, for the hazards are many and it is easy to miss the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. Instead of focusing on one issue in great detail, I shall hang a number of warning sign…Read more
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452Approaching Other Animals with Caution: Exploring Insights from Aquinas's PsychologyNew Blackfriars 100 (1090): 715-737. 2019.In this essay I explore the resources Thomas Aquinas provides for enquiries concerning the psychological abilities of nonhuman animals. I first look to Aquinas’s account of divine, angelic, human, and nonhuman animal naming, to help us articulate the contours of a ‘critical anthropocentrism’ that aims to steer clear of the mistakes of a na¨ıve anthropocentrism and misconceived avowals to entirely eschew anthropocentrism. I then address the need for our critical anthropocentrism both to reject th…Read more
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441The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations in a Thomist Hylomorphic AnthropologyScientia et Fides 6 (2): 55-83. 2018.This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person’s immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the…Read more
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108Thomistic Hylomorphism, Self-Determination, Neuroplasticity, and GraceProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 85 99-120. 2011.This paper presents a Thomistic analysis of addiction that incorporates scientific, philosophical, and theological features of addiction. I will argue first, that a Thomistic hylomorphic anthropology provides a cogent explanation of the causal interactions between human action and neuroplasticity. I will employ Karol Wojtyła’s account of self-determination to further clarify the kind of neuroplasticity involved in addiction. Next, I will elucidate how a Thomistic anthropology can accommodate, wi…Read more
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104Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of the New Mechanist Philosophy of NeuroscienceScientia et Fides 5 (2). 2017.This article, the first of a two-part essay, presents an account of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism that engages with recent work on neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I show that Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is compatible with the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology, but that it is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. I begin with the basic claims of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism and focus on its understanding of psychological powers …Read more
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107Perception and the Vis Cogitativa: A Thomistic Analysis of Aspectual, Actional, and Affectional PerceptsAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (3): 397-437. 2014.This paper aims to establish some of the taxonomical groundwork required for developing a robust philosophy of perception on the basis of the Thomistic doctrine of the cogitative power . The formal object of the cogitative power will be divided into aspectual, actional, and affectional percepts. Accordingly, the paper contends that there is an internal sense power capable of a non-conceptual and pre-linguistic perceptual estimation of what some particular is, what could be done with respect to i…Read more
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2787Why the Five Ways?: Aquinas’s Avicennian Insight into the Problem of Unity in the Aristotelian Metaphysics and Sacra DoctrinaProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 141-158. 2012.This paper will argue that the order and the unity of St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways can be elucidated through a consideration of St. Thomas’s appropriation of an Avicennian insight that he used to order and unify the wisdom of the Aristotelian and Abrahamic philosophical traditions towards the existence of God. I will begin with a central aporia from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle says that the science of first philosophy has three different theoretical vectors: ontology, aitiology, and the…Read more
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97Avicenna's Healing and the Metaphysics of TruthJournal of the History of Philosophy 56 (1): 17-44. 2018.In this study, I expound Avicenna's doctrine of truth as it is presented in his Metaphysics of the Healing. My aim is to establish two theses. First, that Avicenna has a rich and systematic metaphysical doctrine of truth that is worked out within the epistemological, ontological, aitiological, and theological investigations of the Ilāhiyyāt. Second, that his doctrine of truth draws upon the accounts of truth he found in his predecessors, and that he amplifies these accounts in light of his own i…Read more
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50Hylomorphism, New Mechanisms, and Explanations in Biology, Neuroscience, and PsychologyIn William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons & Nicholas J. Teh (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, Routledge. 2017.Is Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism compatible mechanistic science? In this essay I forge a rapprochement between Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism and the "new mechanist philosophy" in biology, neuroscience, and psychology by drawing attention to their shared commitments concerning multilevel organization, mechanisms, and teleology. Significantly, the new mechanists endorse organization realism (a touchstone of hylomorphism). Similarly, Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism is committed to the reality of mech…Read more
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122Where does avicenna demonstrate the existence of God?Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 26 (1): 97-128. 2016.This study examines a number of different answers to the question: wheredoes Avicenna demonstrate the existence of God within the Metaphysics of the Healing? Many interpreters have contended that there is an argument for God’s existence in Metaphysics of the Healing I.6–7. In this study I show that such views are incorrect and that the only argument for God’s existence in the Metaphysics of the Healing is found in VIII.1–3. My own interpretation relies upon a careful consideration of the scienti…Read more
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67Delectatio, gaudium, fruitio. Three Kinds of Pleasure for Three Kinds of Knowledge in Thomas AquinasQuaestio 15 543-552. 2015.This paper investigates Thomas Aquinas’s threefold division of pleasure into delectatio, gaudium, and fruitio, and its taxonomical basis in his threefold division of knowledge into tactility, the cogitative power, and the intellect. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three ways in which the sensory and intellectual appetites rest in the good. When the will rests in the intellectually apprehended good, this act is called fruitio; when the concupiscible appetite rests in a good apprehended by the intern…Read more
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326Harmonizing Faith and Knowledge of God’s Existence in St. ThomasIn Harm Goris, L. Hendriks & H. J. M. Schoot (eds.), Faith, Hope and Love. Thomas Aquinas on Living by the Theological Virtues, Peeters. pp. 137-160. 2015.Is it necessary for all Christians – including Christians who are metaphysicians with demonstrative knowledge of God’s existence – to hold by faith that God exists? I shall approach this apparently straightforward question by investigating two opposing lines of interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s own response to this question. I shall begin with two texts from Thomas that motivate two incompatible theses concerning Thomas’s doctrine of the harmony of faith and reason with respect to the existence…Read more
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5Linguistic Apprehension as Incidental Sensation in Thomas AquinasProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84 179-196. 2010.In this paper I will delineate the psychological operations and faculties required for linguistic apprehension within a Thomistic psychology. This will require first identifying the proper object of linguistic apprehension, which will then allow me to specify the distinct operations and faculties necessary for linguisticapprehension. I will argue that the semantic value of any linguistic term is a type of incidental sensible and that its cognitive apprehension is a type of incidentalsensation. H…Read more
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78Aristotle and the Philosophical Foundations of NeuroscienceProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 87 213-230. 2013.This paper aims to show that the thought of Aristotle can shed much light on the irksome problems that lurk around the philosophical foundations of neuroscience. First, we will explore the ramifications of Aristotle’s mereological principle, namely, that it is not the eye that sees, but the human person that sees by the eye. Next, we shall draw upon the riches of Maxwell Bennett’s and Peter Hacker’s Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience in order to elucidate how Aristotle’s mereological prin…Read more
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101The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being in Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the HealingReview of Metaphysics 69 (2): 261-286. 2015.This essay expounds Avicenna’s doctrine of the analogy of being and examine the function it plays in his Metaphysics of the Healing (að–Ðifâ’, al–Ilâhiyyât). In the first part addresses the question: What is Avicenna’s doctrine of the analogy of being? The essay begins by situating Avicenna’s doctrine of the analogy of being within the epistemological framework of his account of metaphysics as an Aristotelian science. It then explicates Avicenna’s own presentation of analogy within his account o…Read more
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95A Mereological Construal of the Primary Notions Being and Thing in Avicenna and AquinasAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2): 335-360. 2014.This study has two goals: first, to show that Avicenna’s account of being and thing significantly influenced Aquinas’s doctrine of the primary notions; second, to establish the value of adopting a mereological construal of these primary notions in the metaphysics of Avicenna and Aquinas. I begin with an explication of the mereological construal of the primary notions that casts these notions in terms of wholes and parts. Being and thing refer to the same entitative whole and have the same extens…Read more
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University of OxfordLecturer
Oxford, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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