Our Summer 2014 meeting will take place on Friday 30th May, at The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB (travel directions here ).
Programme
12:00—13:00 Chris Martin (Auckland): ‘The Grammar and Logic of Number and Unity at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century’
13:00—14:00 Lunch [Participants who wish to might lunch together at the RADA cafe just by the Warburg Institute (Malet Street). We shall gather outside the Warburg Institute at 13:00 to go to the restaurant.]
14:00—15:00 Robert Pasnau (Colorado): ‘When Did Ideas Become Objects of Perception?’
15:00—16:00 Tianyue Wu (Peking): ‘Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defence of Divine Predestination against the Manipulation Argument’
16:00—16:30 Coffee
16:30—17:30 Giorgio Pini (Fordham): ‘Non-mutual Relations in Duns Scotus’
Abstracts
Chris Martin, ‘The Grammar and Logic of Number and Unity at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century’: Peter Abaelard is only the most famous of many masters active in Paris at the beginning of the twelfth century. A central problem for these masters was to reconcile the apparently competing claims of Aristotle and Priscian in order to construct philosophical grammars on which to ground their metaphysical theories. In this paper I will make a start on trying to untangle the competing positions which were developed to account in particular for the grammatical, logical, and metaphysical properties of unity and number. It is these positions which Abaelard refers to and criticises in developing his own philosophical logic and only when we understand them will we be properly able to properly assess the originality of his work.
Robert Pasnau, ‘When Did Ideas Become Objects of Perception?’: Somewhere in the middle of the seventeenth century, philosophers began to characterize ideas as the immediate objects of perception. Looking carefully at the medieval background, I consider the ways in which this notorious doctrine is, and is not, something new, and I propose some reasons for why philosophers started talking this way.
Tianyue Wu, ‘Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defence of Divine Predestination against the Manipulation Argument’: By reconstructing Augustine’s insights into the relationship between divine action and human freedom, this essay aims to explain how divine predestination can be philosophically compatible with our moral intuitions today. It will focus on the election of Jacob to show Augustine’s position in his later works and offer a preliminary defence by appealing to a Frankfurt-style case. Then it will examine the sharp criticisms of Frankfurt-style cases from contemporary incompatibilists by Manipulation Argument. This critical examination will reveal a significant find in Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, i.e., the asymmetric structure of moral responsibility, which will help us respond to the criticisms from Manipulation Argument and liberate the debate on free will from the dialectical stalemate.
Giorgio Pini, ‘Non-mutual Relations in Duns Scotus’: Relations are typically mutual: if Mary is taller than Paul, Paul is lower than Mary. So-called “non-mutual relations” are such that no corresponding co-relation holds between what a relation is directed at and its foundation. One of Aristotle’s examples of non-mutual relations is the relation holding between knowledge and what is known: his contention is that there is a relation between knowledge and what is known but no corresponding co-relation between what is known and knowledge. In this paper, I will present the main aspects of Scotus’s treatment of non-mutual relations and consider the central role they play in some of his most characteristic metaphysical views.
Programme
12:00—13:00 Chris Martin (Auckland): ‘The Grammar and Logic of Number and Unity at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century’
13:00—14:00 Lunch [Participants who wish to might lunch together at the RADA cafe just by the Warburg Institute (Malet Street). We shall gather outside the Warburg Institute at 13:00 to go to the restaurant.]
14:00—15:00 Robert Pasnau (Colorado): ‘When Did Ideas Become Objects of Perception?’
15:00—16:00 Tianyue Wu (Peking): ‘Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defence of Divine Predestination against the Manipulation Argument’
16:00—16:30 Coffee
16:30—17:30 Giorgio Pini (Fordham): ‘Non-mutual Relations in Duns Scotus’
Abstracts
Chris Martin, ‘The Grammar and Logic of Number and Unity at the Beginning of the Twelfth Century’: Peter Abaelard is only the most famous of many masters active in Paris at the beginning of the twelfth century. A central problem for these masters was to reconcile the apparently competing claims of Aristotle and Priscian in order to construct philosophical grammars on which to ground their metaphysical theories. In this paper I will make a start on trying to untangle the competing positions which were developed to account in particular for the grammatical, logical, and metaphysical properties of unity and number. It is these positions which Abaelard refers to and criticises in developing his own philosophical logic and only when we understand them will we be properly able to properly assess the originality of his work.
Robert Pasnau, ‘When Did Ideas Become Objects of Perception?’: Somewhere in the middle of the seventeenth century, philosophers began to characterize ideas as the immediate objects of perception. Looking carefully at the medieval background, I consider the ways in which this notorious doctrine is, and is not, something new, and I propose some reasons for why philosophers started talking this way.
Tianyue Wu, ‘Augustine on the Election of Jacob: A Philosophical Defence of Divine Predestination against the Manipulation Argument’: By reconstructing Augustine’s insights into the relationship between divine action and human freedom, this essay aims to explain how divine predestination can be philosophically compatible with our moral intuitions today. It will focus on the election of Jacob to show Augustine’s position in his later works and offer a preliminary defence by appealing to a Frankfurt-style case. Then it will examine the sharp criticisms of Frankfurt-style cases from contemporary incompatibilists by Manipulation Argument. This critical examination will reveal a significant find in Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, i.e., the asymmetric structure of moral responsibility, which will help us respond to the criticisms from Manipulation Argument and liberate the debate on free will from the dialectical stalemate.
Giorgio Pini, ‘Non-mutual Relations in Duns Scotus’: Relations are typically mutual: if Mary is taller than Paul, Paul is lower than Mary. So-called “non-mutual relations” are such that no corresponding co-relation holds between what a relation is directed at and its foundation. One of Aristotle’s examples of non-mutual relations is the relation holding between knowledge and what is known: his contention is that there is a relation between knowledge and what is known but no corresponding co-relation between what is known and knowledge. In this paper, I will present the main aspects of Scotus’s treatment of non-mutual relations and consider the central role they play in some of his most characteristic metaphysical views.