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226Augustine on testimonyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (2). 2009.Philosophical work on testimony has flourished in recent years. Testimony roughly involves a source affirming or stating something in an attempt to transfer information to one or more persons. It is often said that the topic of testimony has been neglected throughout most of the history of philosophy, aside from contributions by David Hume (1711–1776) and Thomas Reid (1710–1796).1 True as this may be, Hume and Reid aren’t the only ones who deserve a tip of the hat for recognizing the importance …Read more
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210Mediaeval Intentionality and Pseudo-IntentionalityQuaestio 10 25-44. 2010.Wilfrid Sellars charged that mediaeval philosophers confused the genuine intentionality of thinking with what he called the “pseudo-intentionality” of sensing. I argue that Sellars’s charge rests on importing a form of mind/body dualism that was foreign to the Middle Ages, but that he does touch on a genuine difficulty for mediaeval theories, namely whether they have the conceptual resources to distinguish between intentionality as a feature of consciousness and mere discriminative responses to …Read more
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172Duns Scotus on Singular EssencesMedioevo 30 111-137. 2005.Socrates, for example, has an essence that includes more than his human nature, which is his specific essence; he has an essence proper to himself alone, an essence that cannot be had by anyone else. Although Socrates does have singular (individualized) forms, his singular essence is not a form—there is no form Socrateity for the singular essence parallelling the form humanity for the specific essence. Instead, Socrates has his singular essence in consequence of being an individual, that is, in …Read more
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167The inner cathedral: Mental architecture in high scholasticismVivarium 46 (3): 253-274. 2008.Mediaeval psychological theory was a “faculty psychology”: a confederation of semiautonomous sub-personal agents, the interaction of which constitutes our psychological experience. One such faculty was intellective appetite, that is, the will. On what grounds was the will taken to be a distinct faculty? After a brief survey of Aristotle's criteria for identifying and distinguishing mental faculties, I look in some detail at the mainstream mediaeval view, given clear expression by Thomas Aquinas,…Read more
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154Why isn't the mind-body problem medieval?In Forming the Mind, Springer Verlag. 2005.One answer: Because medieval philosophy is just the continuation of ancient philosophy by other means—the Latin language and the Catholic Church— and, as Wallace Matson pointed out some time ago, the mind-body problem isn’t ancient
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128In the first volume of Capital, Marx introduces a labor theory of value. The theory is supposed to form the basis of his “laying bare” the “inner workings” of capitalism. The theory rests on two claims, and at the outset Marx uses it to explain four features of capitalist production. Yet by the end of the final volume of Capital, he abandons both claims and offers alternative accounts of all four features of capitalism. We hold that Marx’s introduction of the labor theory of value is not the presen…Read more
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127Abelard on Mental LanguageAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2): 169-187. 2007.I argue that Abelard was the author of the first theory of mental language in the Middle Ages, devising a “language of thought” to provide the semantics for ordinary languages, based on the idea that thoughts have linguistic character. I examine Abelard’s semantic framework with special attention to his principle of compositionality (the meaning of a whole is a function of the meanings of the parts); the results are then applied to Abelard’s distinction between complete and incomplete expression…Read more
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127Aristotle was the first thinker to devise a logical system. He drew upon the emphasis on universal definition found in Socrates, the use of reductio ad absurdum in Zeno of Elea, claims about propositional structure and negation in Parmenides and Plato, and the body of argumentative techniques found in legal reasoning and geometrical proof. Yet the theory presented in Aristotle’s five treatises known as the Organon—the Categories, the De interpretatione, the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analyti…Read more
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100In one corner Socrates; in the other, on the mat, his cat Felix. Socrates, of course, thinks (correctly) that Felix the Cat is on the mat. But there’s the rub. For Socrates to think that Felix is on the mat, he has to be able to think about Felix, that is, he has to have some sort of cognitive grasp of an individual — and not just any individual, but Felix himself. How is that possible? What is going on when we think about things?
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97Peter AbelardStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Peter Abelard (1079 – 21 April 1142) [‘Abailard’ or ‘Abaelard’ or ‘Habalaarz’ and so on] was the pre-eminent philosopher and theologian of the twelfth century. The teacher of his generation, he was also famous as a poet and a musician. Prior to the recovery of Aristotle, he brought the native Latin tradition in philosophy to its highest pitch. His genius was evident in all he did. He is, arguably, the greatest logician of the Middle Ages and is equally famous as the first great nominalist philos…Read more
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94phers] to be a demonstration of the fact that the human species (and in every case the species of all generable and corruptible individuals) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all, a question is raised: whether, following the Philosopher’s method, the human species (and in every case any given species of generable and corruptible [individuals]) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all.
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86Emotion in Medieval ThoughtIn Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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82That it is: According to the Commentator, Met. 7 com. 11 ([Iuntina 8 fol. 76r]): The definition is the same as the substance of the thing. Hence it is in some way outside the soul, and consequently all its parts are in some way outside the soul. But the definition is composed of universals. Hence [the universal is outside the soul]
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81Perception, Hallucination, and IllusionPhilosophical Psychology 23 (5): 715-719. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
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62Boethius: The First of the ScholasticsCarmina Philosophiae 16 23-50. 2007.forthcoming in Carmina philosophiae
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60Abelard's Answers to PorphyryDocumenti E Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 18 249-270. 2007.Abelardo eredita dall'Isagoge di Porfirio una questione filosofica fondamentale, relativa al problema degli universali, posto al centro della metafisica. Abelardo si pone subito fuori da questa linea interpretativa. L'A. esamina le risposte di Abelardo ai quattro quesiti di Porfirio formulati all'inizio dell'Isagoge punto per punto, attraverso l'esame di Dialectica, Logica «Ingredientibus» nella parte relativa al commento all'Isagoge, in rapporto con il Commentarius maior in Isagogen Porphyrii d…Read more
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58Unintended Changes in Cognition, Mood, and Behavior Arising from Cell-Based Interventions for Neurological Conditions: Ethical ChallengesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (5): 31-36. 2009.The prospect of using cell-based interventions to treat neurological conditions raises several important ethical and policy questions. In this target article, we focus on issues related to the unique constellation of traits that characterize CBIs targeted at the central nervous system. In particular, there is at least a theoretical prospect that these cells will alter the recipients' cognition, mood, and behavior—brain functions that are central to our concept of the self. The potential for such…Read more
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46Le rôle des concepts selon OckhamPhilosophiques 32 (2): 435-447. 2005.Philosophiques 32 (2005), 435-447. [An English version is available here.].
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44Susan James, in her recent work Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon 1997), prefaces her investigation of emotions in the seventeenth century with a series of remarks about the earlier career of the emotions, in particular their treatment in the Middle Ages. In brief, she takes the ‘new’ analyses of the passions put forward in the seventeenth century to be a philosophical sideshow to the main event: the dethronement of Aristotelian natural philoso…Read more
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32[1] In twelve quite demanding chapters, outstanding scholars provide an overall view of the key issues of Scotus’s philosophical thought. To this a very concise introduction is added, concerning the life and works of John Duns (very good, especially the survey of works and the information on critical editions etc.). Throughout the book, I find the information clear and the difficult topics well explained. Moreover, the volume gives a quick entrance to the vast literature. Among the topics discus…Read more
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30I take "philosophy" to be an English word referring to a certain kind of thinking, a certain kind of approach to a certain kind of problem. To explain those "certain kind of"s would take a book; perhaps the best I can do here is gesture at what it is that English-language philosophers do.
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29B opens his discussion of the problem of universals, in his second commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, with a destructive dilemma: genera and species either exist or are concepts; but they can neither exist nor be soundly conceived; therefore the enquiry into them should be abandoned (In Isag. maior . ). Boethius’ strategy to get around this dilemma is well known. He follows the lead of Alexander of Aphrodisias, distinguishing several ways in which genera and species can be conceive…Read more
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261 Scotus on MetaphysicsIn Thomas Williams (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, Cambridge University Press. pp. 15. 2003.
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26Review: The Beatles Anthology (review)For more than thirty-five years, the Beatles have credited their musical success to the long hours they spent playing in Hamburg, before they were discovered by Brian Epstein and then the rest of the world. Now it’s the official story: The Beatles Anthology (367 pp. Chronicle Books $60), the group’s collective ‘autobiography’ published October 5th, describes how their musical apprenticeship served on the Reeperbahn produced the sound that defined the 1960s and, arguably, popular music ever since. To…Read more
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17Novelists and other producers of fiction can make many mistakes (including becoming novelists and other producers of fiction), but there are three kinds of mistake that stem from the writer's ignorance. First, there's the purely external mistake, which occurs in the..
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14Living Alone, Living Together: Essays on the Use of HousingEmerald Publishing. 2017.This book considers how a dwelling can protect and promote both our anxieties and our relationships. Both essays use a non-traditional literature to explore being alone and being with others, rather than relying on the social science literature, and offer a distinct and original contribution to the housing studies literature.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |