Matteo Casarosa

This paper offers a formal and exegetical analysis of the notion of proprium (proper accident), a concept rooted in Aristotelian logic and further developed by Thomas Aquinas and other medievals. While commonly defined as a property that necessarily follows from a thing’s essence without being part of it, the proprium has been a source of terminological divergence and substantive disagreement, both in scholastic and analytic circles. We defend a refined version of Kit Fine’s account—according to which propria follow logically from essence—by situating it within the framework of Aristotelian-Thomistic logic and explicating it through higher-order logic. In particular, we argue that proper accidents are those whose definition contains the proper subject as a specific difference, thus violating the so-called “inverse proportion of extension and comprehension,” and yielding propositions that are true solely in virtue of the meaning of the terms involved, while being non-analytic in a modern sense. The paper contributes both a formal reconstruction of the concept and a historical reinterpretation of Aquinas’s position, and it clarifies how our account refines or reconciles competing contemporary views—especially those framed in causal rather than logical terms.

In this paper, I critique the perverted faculty argument (PFA) by arguing that it admits of several counterexamples. Then, through a series of revisions, I formulate an argument that preserves the same conclusions regarding sexual morality and makes sense of the counterexamples. In particular, I argue that one must distinguish between the end of a faculty and the end of our capacity to make use of it, as well as take into account the natural subordination among goods, and the risk of misuse posed by intense pleasure. Finally, I propose that the notion of general danger helps us see how an absolute prohibition can stem from these considerations.

The derived functors $$\lim ^n$$ of the inverse limit are widely studied for their topological applications, among which are some repercussions on the additivity of strong homology. Set theory has proven useful in dealing with these functors, for instance in the case of the inverse system $$\textbf{A}$$ of abelian groups indexed over $${}^\omega \omega $$. So far, consistency results for nonvanishing derived limits of $$\textbf{A}$$ have always assumed the existence of a scale (i.e. a linear cofinal subset of $$({}^\omega \omega, \le ^*)$$, or equivalently that $$\mathfrak {b} = \mathfrak {d} $$). Here we eliminate that assumption and prove that nonvanishing derived limits, and hence the non-additivity of strong homology, are consistent with any value of $$\aleph _1 \le \mathfrak {b} \le \mathfrak {d}

In this paper, I propose a view of real definitions such that a difference of a species need not presuppose all of the differences that occur in the definition of the genus it qualifies. In such a case, two differences can be swapped in the definition of the species. Under this view, the correct diagrammatic representation of the subdivision of genera into species is a graph possibly containing cycles, rather than a tree as commonly assumed. Applying this theory, I respond to Joseph Gredt’s claim that “rational animal” cannot be further specified except accidentally, as rationality does not admit further specification. I also tackle a different argument by David Oderberg to the effect that all possible rational animals, even merely possible ones, are of the same metaphysical species.

The principle of Identity of Indiscernibles has been challenged with various thought experiments involving symmetric universes. In this paper, I describe a fractal universe and argue that, while it is not a symmetric universe in the classical sense, under the assumption of a relational theory of space it nonetheless contains a set of objects indiscernible by pure properties alone. I then argue that the argument against the principle from this new thought experiment resists better than those from classical symmetric universes three main objections put forth against this kind of arguments.