Author: Roland

  • That orders regulate

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    In Summa Theologica II-I Q87 A1 corp. Aquinas says the following: Now it is evident that all things contained in an order, are, in a manner, one, in relation to the principle of that order. Consequently, whatever rises up against an order, is put down by that order or by the principle thereof. And because… →

  • Lonergan on Aquinas on Causation

    Below is an excerpt from Bernard Lonergan’s incredible book Grace and Freedom, discussing Thomas Aquinas’s views on causation and how they relate to Aristotle’s views on the topic. Except for the term “actio” I’ve replaced Latin phrases with their English translations in square brackets. Causation is the common feature of both operation and cooperation; its… →

  • On the transitivity of strict preference

    The notion of comparing alternatives often comes up in philosophy, particularly when discussing practical reason. There are various names for this (we can talk about the reasons for choosing A over B, or how A is better than B, or how A is more desirable to B, or how A is preferred to B) but… →

  • Virtual existence

    It might not seem like it, but a proper understanding of virtual existence can be significantly helpful when trying to understand the structure of human communities. To this end, I’d like to spend some time thinking about this puzzling notion here. Substances and aggregates again You’ll recall that, in our discussions about substantial activities, we spent… →

  • Goods, basic goods, and faculties

    We’ve mentioned before that the goodness of some thing is relative to that thing’s nature. It is good for a human to have two legs because our biology is structured in such a way that having two legs is conducive to our flourishing. By the same token, it is not good for a cat to… →

  • Actualisation of potentiality as such

    While we’re on the topic of confusing things Aquinas said, we can talk about his analysis of change, which he in turn gets from Aristotle. We’ve noted before that the first step in analysing change is the realisation that it involves the actualisation of a potential: When a hot cup of coffee gets cold, for example,… →

  • On the homogeneity of measures

    In Summa Theologica II-I Q96 A2 corp. Aquinas says “a measure should be homogeneous with that which it measures”. While I could gather roughly what he was saying from the context, I must admit that this phrase confused me a bit. But what he’s saying isn’t really that confusing or complicated when we consider common… →

  • Substantial and aggregate activities

    In the Physics Aristotle gives his famous definition of a substance, which he refers to as a thing that “exists by nature” or as a “natural object”: Some things exist by nature, others are due to other causes. Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants and simple bodies like earth, fire, air, and water;… →

  • Joy and hope

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    In a previous post, I took joy to be happiness with respect to our ultimate good. We also spoke about two ways in which happiness is achieved: through the acquisition of a good or the continued possession of a good. The Aristotelian inside me was unsatisfied with this, for we usually take happiness to be… →

  • Analogy at the foundations of mathematics

    Consider the Benacerraf identification problem in philosophy of maths: there are multiple different ways of “defining” natural numbers in terms of sets, so there is no way of determining which definition is the “correct” one. This is not just a problem about natural numbers but they’re a useful notion to introduce the problem with. In fact,… →