My colleague, Dan Bonevac, and I are putting the final touches on two manuscripts about Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways. One is designed for an academic press, and the other for a more popular or “trade” press. We think that the first will probably be appearing in late 2026, and the other a few months later.Continue reading “Two New Books on the Five Ways”
Tag Archives: philosophy
Social Choice and Defeasible Reasoning
I’m the author of the article on “Defeasible Reasoning” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In revising my entry this month, I came across a fascinating idea proposed in 1991 by Sten Lindström (in an article first published in Theoria in 2022). As I argue in my article, the best approach to formalizing a defeasibleContinue reading “Social Choice and Defeasible Reasoning”
Arrow’s Theorem and Democracy
Importance of Arrow’s Theorem Does Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem (Kenneth Arrow 1960) challenge the value of democracy? First, we have to ask: Is democracy an end in itself or a means to an end? For Locke: “For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby madeContinue reading “Arrow’s Theorem and Democracy”
Against the New Natural Law: Theoretical Knowledge of the Good
If my account of normative normality is roughly correct, then we can see that the human good is something that belongs, both semantically and metaphysically, to the domain of the objects of theoretical knowledge (in contradiction to proposition 5 of the NNL). It is possible for God or an angel to know the human goodContinue reading “Against the New Natural Law: Theoretical Knowledge of the Good”
Causal Powers and Natural Teleology
This is second in a series of posts on teleology and the natural law. In my previous post, I sketched the difference between the new natural law and classical Aristotelian-Thomist natural law. Once one has causal power in one’s ontology, one also has teleology. Each causal power is essentially forward-looking: it refers to a possibleContinue reading “Causal Powers and Natural Teleology”
New Natural Law and Natural Teleology
The natural law tradition is rooted in the work of Plato, Aristotle, and others and plays a central and foundation role in the history of Western civilization, in particular, in its conception of ethics, law, and politics. It has played that role simply because it is both profound and correct. Therefore, the task of interpretingContinue reading “New Natural Law and Natural Teleology”
Strictly Uncausable Things
There is a good reason for thinking that the existence of a strictly uncausable thing (the sort of thing that composes any First Cause of the Universe) would have to be atemporal, beyond the limits of time. Any time-bound entity would be the sort of thing that could change and that could conceivably even beginContinue reading “Strictly Uncausable Things”
Defending Universal Causation
The argument for an uncausable First Cause sketched in earlier posts relies on a principle of Universal Causation. The principle of Universal Causation is a fundamental principle of reason. As such, its truth cannot be demonstrated from more fundamental principles. However, I can argue for the principle dialectically, pointing out the unacceptably high price ofContinue reading “Defending Universal Causation”
Aristotle vs the New Natural Law
Traditional Thomists (like Steve Jensen) and “new natural law” theorists (like Chris Tollefsen) differ radically on the nature of intentional action. For new natural lawyers, I intend to do something only if the thing in question is entailed by some description of my action that figures as such in my practical reasoning. For Aristotelian Thomists,Continue reading “Aristotle vs the New Natural Law”
The Pluralization Argument
My second argument for a First Cause relies on the Pluralized version of the principle of Universal Causation. Let’s assume again that the Universe exists, that is, that there are some broadly causable things. Is the Universe itself broadly causable? Each member of the universe is broadly causable (by definition). So, we can conceive ofContinue reading “The Pluralization Argument”
The Analytic Thomist 