This is the second in a series of posts on the relevance of neo-Aristotelian philosophy of nature and the problem of free will. As I mentioned in the first post, disposing of the threat of determinism is not sufficient to resolve all the problems arising from the idea of free will. Free will seems problematic,Continue reading “Aristotle and Ultimate Responsibility”
Tag Archives: philosophy
Aristotle, Time, and Free Will
Free will and moral responsibility are important for many reasons —legal, as well as theological. Thanks to advances in both science and philosophy, the specter of determinism is no longer a serious threat to belief in free will, but that doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods yet. I consider three additional challengesContinue reading “Aristotle, Time, and Free Will”
Just War and Group Intentions, I
Much of the theory of just war assumes that the warmaker is a single individual, the prince. It is doubtful whether this has ever been true: even in so-called ‘absolute monarchies,’ the prince relies on councilors, advisors, and even some relatively independent collaborators (including bishops and parliaments). In modern times, it is undeniable that itContinue reading “Just War and Group Intentions, I”
Two New Books on the Five Ways
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”
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”
