Kyle S. Hodge

Universal Generalization, if it is not the most poorly understood inference rule in natural deduction, then it is the least well explained or justified. The inference rule is, prima facie, quite ambitious: on the basis of a fact established of one thing, I may infer that the fact holds of every thing in the class to which the one belongs—a class which may contain indefinitely many things. How can such an inference be made with any confidence as to its validity or ability to preserve truth from premise to conclusion? My goal in this paper is to explain how Universal Generalization works in a way that makes sense of its ability to preserve truth. In doing so, I shall review common accounts of Universal Generalization and explain why they are inadequate or are explanatorily unsatisfying. Happily, my account makes no ontological or epistemological presumptions and therefore should be compatible with whichever ontological or epistemological schemes the reader prefers.

In his Confessions, Augustine says that he achieved great intellectual insight from what he cryptically calls the “books of the Platonists.” Prior to reading these books, he was a corporealist and was unable to conceive of incorporeal beings. Because of the insurmountable philosophical problems corporealism caused for the Christian belief he was seeking, Augustine claims that this was the greatest intellectual barrier he faced in converting to Christianity. As such, the specific contents and effects of these Platonist books are of great biographical and philosophical interest. Heretofore, the explanation of the contents and effects of these books has not been forthcoming. This essay aims to supply it. I argue that Augustine learned the mereological distinction between pertensive and entensive presence in the books of the Platonists. This distinction is required for properly conceiving of incorporeal beings. In support of this thesis, I show that Augustine himself says that he learned this very distinction, that the distinction is present in Platonist texts that scholars agree were among “the books of the Platonists,” that the distinction is present in one of Augustine’s earliest works, and that this distinction is uniquely capable of resolving the philosophical difficulties he faced as a corporealist.

Montaigne’s “Apology” is a lengthy work the overarching theme of which is the relationship between epistemology, virtue, and vice. It is a commentary on the thesis that science or knowledge “is the mother of all virtue and that all vice is produced by ignorance.” Montaigne’s response is radical and unequivocal: there is no idea more harmful; its consequences are no less than the destruction of inward contentment and the undermining of societal peace and stability. Indeed, Montaigne sees the Protestant Reformation as the instantiation of this terrible thesis, with all of the attendant trouble it had and continued to cause in France. So Montaigne inverts the thesis: ignorance begets virtue and (presumption of) knowledge vice. Out of this inversion he draws many conservative social and political consequences, and this is one of the most interesting and yet underexplored aspects of the text. Montaigne exhibits the conservatism of the Counterreformation in the “Apology,” and I intend to draw more attention to this theme. I show that Montaigne’s main target in the “Apology” was not dogmatism as such, but Protestantism as a species of dogmatism. I then show that, by using a few elementary epistemic concepts, Montaigne launches a withering skeptical attack on the Reformation. Out of this criticism I draw some important conservative themes that have important implications for our understanding of Montaigne’s social and political thought, as well as for conservative political theory and its intellectual history.