Rondo Keele

The important impact of the French Franciscan Peter Auriol (ca. 1280-1322) upon contemporary philosophical theology at Oxford is well known and has been well documented and analyzed, at least for a narrow range of issues, particularly in epistemology. This article attempts a more systematic treatment of his effects upon Oxford debates across a broader range of subjects and over a more expansive duration of time than has been done previously. Topics discussed include grace and merit, future contingents and divine foreknowledge, and the logic of the Trinity.

This article focuses on one aspect of the late mediaeval debate over divine power, as it was discussed by Oxford philosophers Walter Chatton (d. 1343) and William Ockham (d. 1347). Chatton and Ockham would have agreed, for example, that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the works of Pablo Picasso, but they would not agree over wheher it violates God's omnipotence to say that he cannot make something that Picasso made, for example, the painting Guernica, without using Picasso himself as an intermediate cause. The context of their dispute was a larger debate regarding the ontological status of relations. This article (1) explains how these two issues, omnipotence and relations, became so interestingly tangled together, (2) tries to see which of the two men mentioned above got the better of their exchange, and finally (3) draws out some important consequences for fourteenth-century discussions of causality, occasionalism, and omnipotence

Rondo Keele makes a foray into what he calls 'applied logic', investigating a complex argument strategy employed against Ockham by his greatest contemporary opponent, Walter Chatton. Chatton conceives a two-part strategy which attempts to force a kind of iteration of conceptual analysis, together with an infinite explanatory regress, in order to establish that one particular philosophical analysis is ultimately dependent on another. Chatton uses this strategy against Ockham in order to show that the latter's reductionist metaphysics depends ultimately upon a deeper level of realist assumptions that he can neither evade nor explain away. Keele then shows how, earlier in his career, Chatton found himself on the receiving end of this same strategy, defending his own highly original solution to the problem of future contingents from the very iteration-regress attack he would subsequently use on Ockham. Keele concludes with an examination of Chatton's attempts to avoid the consequences of his own strategy, and draws some connections between this argument strategy and modal collapse in modern logics.

Rondo Keele - Ockham on Concepts - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 659-660 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Rondo Keele Louisiana Scholars' College Claude Panaccio. Ockham on Concepts. Ashgate Studies in Medieval Philosophy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. Pp.xi + 197. Cloth, $79.95. At the simplest level, Ockham on Concepts is just what its title suggests: an interpretation and reconstruction of the views of William of Ockham on the subject of conceptus. Claude Panaccio is a well-respected scholar who has done foundational work on this topic for years. Ockham's opinions on the nature of concepts have been an important area of research for decades, in part because his theory of concepts went through several stages of development, and charting these stages played a central role in dating his texts. Beginning in the 1970s, Ockham's theory of concepts..

This book begins with standard ontological topics--such as the nature of existence--and of metaphysics generally, such as the status of universals, form, and accidents. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and, if so, are they anything more than general concepts? Among the figures it examines are Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, John Buridan, Dietrich of Freiburg, Robert Holcot, Walter Burley, and the 11th-century Islamic philosopher Ibn-Sina. There is also an emphasis on metaphysics broadly conceived. Thus, additional discussions of connected topics in medieval logic, epistemology, and language provide a fuller account of the range of ideas included in the later medieval worldview.

Ockham Explained is an important and much-needed resource on William of Ockham, one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. His eventful and controversial life was marked by sharp career moves and academic and ecclesiastical battles. At 28, Ockham was a conservative English theologian focused obsessively on the nature of language, but by 40, he had transformed into a fugitive friar, accused of heresy, and finally protected by the German emperor as he composed incendiary treatises calling for strong limits on papal authority. This book provides a thorough grounding in Ockham’s life and his many contributions to philosophy. It begins with an overview of the philosopher's youth and the Aristotelian philosophy he studied as a boy. Subsequent chapters cover his ideas on language and logic; his metaphysics and vaunted "razor," as well as his opponents’ "anti-razor" theories; his invention of the church-state separation; and much more. The concluding chapter sums up Ockham's compelling philosophical personality and explains his modern appeal.

Often, when philosophical disputes about what is ultimately real reach a highwater mark of complexity, philosophers step back from the controversy to articulate rules which could settle the issues by showing us how to tell when a person is rationally required to posit an entity, i.e., to admit that it exists. I call such principles rules of rational positing. These rules come in two types, those that tend to make us posit more entities, and those that tend to make us posit fewer. The former are referred to as principles of plurality, the latter, principles of parsimony . ;Mediaeval philosopher Walter Chatton propounded a principle of plurality, which he opposed to William Ockham's famous principle of parsimony known today as 'the razor'. Chatton's principle is therefore sometimes called the 'anti-razor'; however, I have called it the 'Chatton Principle', following Chatton's own custom. The Chatton Principle states that, under certain conditions, we can reason from affirmative propositions to very sure conclusions about what must ultimately be real. ;Serious difficulties have arisen for specialists attempting to give an adequate interpretation of Chatton's principle and its underlying method. This dissertation gives an original interpretation of the Chatton Principle, which refutes the claim that Chatton's Principle and Ockham's razor are complimentary principles , refutes the claim that the method underlying the Chatton Principle is weak, and hence that the Principle is not a good rule but rather a 'magic wand', which multiplies entities needlessly, and subjects the corrected reading of the Chatton Principle to rigorous critique. My ultimate conclusion is that while the Chatton Principle is not lacking in logical force, it does not offer much general leverage against Ockhamism. However, Chatton's Principle does succeed against two particular applications of Ockhamist parsimony