Category: Metaphysics

  • Divine simplicity and freedom

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    In the conversation on divine simplicity over at the Theopolis Institute, Mullins’ most recent response draws attention to the three premises that are “only affirmed by proponents of divine simplicity”: All of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act. God’s act to give grace is identical to God’s one →

  • Dialogue on God’s interaction with the universe

    Bob: How can an immaterial God interact with a material universe? Alice: The question itself needs to be questioned before we can answer it. Bob: How so? It seems like a fairly straightforward question. Alice: Well, consider the word “interact.” God does not interact with anything. To interact requires action going in both directions, and →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • Contrastive probabilistic explanation

    I want to propose something I’m not totally convinced is correct, but that I think is worth considering. In general we have the question about contrastive indeterministic explanation: an antecedent A can give rise to two different consequences B and C, it actually gives rise to B, and we want to know why it gave →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →

  • 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; →

  • Why it’s called “motion”

    I can’t believe it took me so long to realise this. Aristotelians sometimes (read: often) use the word “motion” to refer to change of any kind. Thus it is much broader than how we might use the word today. It’s certainly broader than mere change in location, but even we use it in a broader →