Blog Archive

  • McTaggart and meta-time

    There is what I take to be an error common among my fellow Thomists regarding change and certain theories of time. Put tersely, this error says that the B-theory of time is committed to the Parmenidian denial of change. I had decided to write something about it, but after doing a bit of research, it occurred to me that a form of this error goes all the way back to the start of the contemporary debate about the nature of time. That is to say, a variant of this error is present in John McTaggart’s paper The Unreality of Time.…

  • We don’t do God

    In a dialogue with the late Christopher Hitchens, John Haldane outlines why he thinks religion is crucial as a foundational political principle in societies made up of diverse cultures, religions, etc. Very roughly his position is (1) that the governing of such a society must be built around certain core notions like the respect for others’ rights or the pursuit of their well-being, and (2) that religion gives us the best (indeed, he thinks the only) grounds for motivating such respect or such a pursuit. Backing up slightly it would be helpful to give some account of what we mean…

  • The real distinction

    Whenever we have two concepts, A and B, we can ask to what extent the things they pick out in reality are distinct. If they pick out distinct realities, then we say that there is a real distinction between them. If they pick out the same reality, however, then we say that there is a real identity between them. Even if two concepts are really identical with one another we can still meaningfully talk about a distinction between them, and Thomists say this can happen in two ways. A conceptual (or merely logical) distinction is when the two concepts pick…

  • Essentially ordered series

    The notion of a series, or chain or regress, comes up a number of times in philosophical discussions. In this post, we’re going formalize the notion in general, and then develop this into a formalization of essentially ordered series in particular. Intuitively, a series is when we start with some member and from there we trace through the other members one at a time, possibly indefinitely. The order in which we trace or discover the members in the series can be (and often is) the inverse of their order in reality. This happens with causal chains, for instance, when we start with…

  • Faith and hope

    Our goal here is to unpack the notion of faith so as to overcome confusions in modern thinking on the topic. Lacking a good understanding of the notion actively prevents many people, both Christian and non-Christian, from understanding Scripture. In this post, we will begin an account of faith and give examples from Scripture and everyday life where applicable. Faith involves thinking Sometimes, especially in Christian circles, you’ll here that faith is “trust.” This is a good start insofar as (1) our thinking about trust is less confused than our thinking about faith, and (2) it highlights the fact that…

  • The threefold whole

    In his Metaphysics Δ Aristotle says there are two senses of the term “whole”: Whole means that from which none of the things of which it is said to consist by nature are missing; and that which contains the things contained in such a way that they form one thing. The first sense corresponds to our usage of the word when we say things like, “he managed to eat the whole sandwich” and “she read the whole book in one day.” The second sense corresponds to what we refer to when we speak of general part-whole relations, for instance when we say that…

  • By grace through faith

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    Have you noticed that theological discussions about grace almost always tend to include questions about conversion? What I mean is that they often center around the process by which someone moves from hostility towards God to desiring him. In particular, the Christian understands this as coming to faith in God and his gospel. In Protestant circles the debate about the “doctrines of grace” is about the extent and nature of man’s inability to turn to God by himself, God’s supernatural act to overcome this inability, and the relation all of this has to free will and predestination.[1] In Roman Catholic…

  • Because God said so

    In a recent discussion with some friends, the question of why murder was wrong came up (actually, it was why Aquinas would say murder was wrong, but the discussion equally applies to the more general discussion to be had here). The answer “because God said so” quickly came up and, being a natural law theorist in the tradition of Aquinas, it left me unsatisfied. During later reflection on this, it occurred to me that there are at least three different questions at play here. Each of these questions might be answered in part with “because God said so,” but how…

  • The metaphysics of gender

    I recently listened to this talk by John Finley titled The Metaphysics of Gender: A Thomistic Approach. Below are my notes of this. I skip the introductory remarks and follow the four-section division of the talk. Note that by “gender” here we do not mean the psychological or social construct introduced by modern feminists. Rather, by “gender” we mean the biological distinction between male and female. Some have come to refer to this as “sex” but in the introduction John notes that both terms have ambiguity and so he just picked one. By-and-large parentheses represent my own thoughts, but this is…

  • Common goods

    I had originally intended to tie up the thoughts begun in previous posts on natural and moral goodness, substantial activities, basic goods, and virtual existence, but it has since occurred to me that this would be too ambitious for a single blog post. So, I’ll attempt to approach the topic in installments as I find the time. Those previous discussions are important for the direction I want to go, since we will be using much of the terminology and conclusions there. As such I strongly recommend reading them if you haven’t done so, and perhaps even rereading them if you haven’t done so for…

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