Medieval Philosophy Network,
14th meeting
28 October 2016

The Warburg Institute | University of London | School of Advanced Study | Woburn Square | London WC1H 0AB

Schedule

12:00-13:00
Christopher J. Martin (Auckland University)
'But only God can make a tree': Abaelard on Increase on Growth.

13:00-14:15 Lunch break

14:15-15:15
Cyrlle Michon (l’Université de Nantes)
Aquinas’s account of self- defence and the doctrine of double effect

15:15-16:15
Ben Page (University of Oxford)
Per Se Causal Chains?–A possible revival in contemporary metaphysics?

16:15-16:45 Coffee break

16:45-17:45
John Marenbon (University of Cambridge)
Non-Accidental Relations in earlier Medieval Latin Philosophy

17.45 Conference ends* * *

Abstracts
Christopher Martin, "“But only God can make a tree”: Abaelard on Increase on Growth."

Abstract:  In this paper I return to a topic which I first discussed in my paper ‘The Logic of Growth”* on the claim that nothing grows, one the theses which defined the mid-twelfth century school of followers of Peter Abaelard known as the Nominales.  Since I wrote on the subject Andy Arlig has explored Abaelard’s mereology further, arguing that it grounds a theory of objects, both natural and artificial quite at odds with our folk intuitions about them, and that Abaelard thus regards such quotidian beliefs as false and only to be retained as useful fictions.  I take rather the opposite view and hold that while Abaelard does indeed present an account of wholes and parts which supports the thesis that nothing is increased, or grows, this is a philosophical truth which he seeks to reconcile with our ordinary intuitions about living creatures. In this paper I will attempt to defend my reading of Abaelard and introduce some further evidence for his position from the work of the followers of perhaps his greatest opponent, Alberic of Paris.* ‘The logic of growth: twelfth-century Nominalists and the development of theories of the Incarnation’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology 7, 1998, 1-15. 


Ben Page, "Per Se Causal Chains? - A possible revival in contemporary metaphysics?"

Abstract:  Per Se causal chains, for the Medievals, are everywhere. Yet look as you might in a contemporary introduction to causation, you are unlikely to find any discussion or explication of them. In fact what's more likely is that you find comments to the effect that causes which possess elements of the per se type are atypical and as such they warrant no further discussion. For the Medievalist this is frustrating since these causal chains are often thought of as primary and some interesting arguments, such as arguments for God’s existence, rely upon them and as such they seem worthy of contemporary discussion.The aim of my talk is to lay the groundwork for allowing Medieval discussions relating to per se causal chains to once again become relevant for the contemporary debate. I will do this by suggesting that contemporary metaphysics has smuggled in many aspects of per se causation under a new guise - grounding. I will discuss the similarities and differences between the two notions, and also show how contemporary worries over infinite grounding chains mirror Aquinas’s worries over infinite per se causal chains. If I am correct in thinking that grounding and per se causes are very similar, then it seems to me the time is right for a revival of per se causality within contemporary metaphysics, where debates and uses of these chains in Medieval philosophy will once again become of much broader interest. Medievalists should therefore be ready to lend there expertise to those metaphysicians rediscovering this previously explored notion, that is … assuming I’m correct regarding this similarity! I will leave that for you, the experts, to judge.



Cyrille Michon, "Aquinas’s account of self-defense and the doctrine of double effect"

Abstract:  Aquinas’s brief treatment of self-defense (Summa Theologiae II-II.64.7) is rightly held for the source of both the notion and the theory of ‘double effect’. But whether Aquinas in this text, or elsewhere, defends what is nowadays called thus is controversial. I propose an interpretation.

John Marenbon, "Non-Accidental Relations in earlier Medieval Latin Philosophy"

Abstract:  Historians of philosophy have long recognised that medieval conceptions of relations are radically different from contemporary ones. Contemporary logic represents relations as functions with more than one place, so that, for example, the function ‘— is father of — ’ describes the relationship between John (whose name fills the first gap) and Maximus (whose name fills the second).  Similarly, the relations themselves described by such functions are conceived, not as belonging to only one of the things related, but as somehow being common to them. By contrast, throughout the Medieval Latin tradition, relation was considered, following Aristotle’s Categories, as one of the nine types of accident. But a given particular accident, according to Aristotle and the medieval tradition, can belong to only one substance. For medieval philosophers, therefore, my being father of Maximus is an accident that belongs to me, in much the way that the accident of being grey-haired does. For his part, Maximus has a different accident, of being the son of John. Yet, from Augustine onwards, Latin thinkers recognized a non-accidental type of relation. The persons of the Trinity are related: God the Father is the father of God the Son, and the Son the son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is related to Father and Son as their spiration. These relations are not accidental, because God has no accidental properties. Moreover, although the relation of being-the-son-of is different from that of being-the-father-of, they do not, in the case of the Father and the Son (as they would do in that of John and Maximus) belong to two different substances.
My paper will explore the extent to which thinking about the Trinity allowed philosophers in the period up to 1200 to forge a way of considering relations distinct from Aristotle’s, although the Categories remains its point of departure.

Medieval Philosophy Network,
12th Meeting
1 April 2016

The Warburg Institute | University of London | School of Advanced Study | Woburn Square | London WC1H 0AB

Schedule

[12.30 Meet outside the Warburg for those who would like to attend lunch.]
 
13.45-14.05                       
Dragos Calma (University of Cambridge)
An anniversary today: the object of philosophy
 
14.05-15.05                       
Ian Logan (Blackfriars, Oxford)                       
Per rationalem mentem: Anselm’s ‘turn to the subject’
 
15.05-16.05           
Anna-Katharina Strohschneider
(Würzburg University/Warburg Institute)
Agostino Nifo on Averroes and the Relationship between Physics and Metaphysics
 
16.05-16.35                                    
Coffee Break
 
16.35-17.45                       
Wilfrid Hodges (Queen Mary College, London)
Buridan and the Avicenna-Johnston semantics (with response by Spencer Johnston (University of York)
 
17.45                                   
End of Meeting
 
Abstracts

'Per rationalem mentem: Anselm’s ‘turn to the subject'
Ian Logan - Blackfriars Hall, Oxford

In the Monologion and Proslogion, Anselm addresses the existence and nature of God and how it is that rational investigation of the ineffable is possible. Prima facie the treatment of these questions appears very different in the two works. However, there is commonality in their use of the imagery of sight and light. By investigating this common imagery and the epistemological function of the imago dei in Anselm’s anthropology, I uncover an important aspect of the methodological relationship between the Monologion and Proslogion: the logical dependence of the argument of the earlier work (Monologion) on the later (Proslogion). I contend that the argument of the Proslogion represents the application of, and provides or is intended to provide the justification for, the philosophical ‘turn to the subject’, which Anselm articulates in Monologion 66 - that it is through reflecting on itself that the rational mind comes to knowledge of the supreme being. Though articulated there this approach is not systematically employed nor grounded in the Monologion. I suggest that it is the argument of the Proslogion that grounds the epistemological role that Anselm gives to the imago dei in the Monologion. Anselm does not need to rehearse the trinitarian argument of the Monologion in the Proslogion, precisely because, having established God’s existence and attributes by his unum argumentum, which constitutes the reflection on the thinking self that he had proposed in the Monologion, he has provided the foundation for the trinitarian argument based on the notion of the imago dei that is articulated in the Monologion.


'Agostino Nifo on Averroes and the Relationship between Physics and Metaphysics'
Anna-Katharina Strohschneider, Universität Würzburg

The Renaissance Averroist Agostino Nifo was not only interested in Averroes' theory of the intellect, but also in his metaphysics – so much, in fact, that he wrote a super commentary on the twelfth book of Averroes' Long Commentary on the Metaphysics. In his work Averroes writes at length about the relationship between physics and metaphysics, defending his own theory against both Alexander of Aphrodisias and Avicenna. That means that Nifo, too, must take a stand on the division of labour between the two sciences. I argue that Nifo actually introduces a slightly different take on the respective responsibilities of physics and metaphysics by paraphrasing and explaining Averroes' theory. Nifo puts more emphasis than Averroes himself on the type of demonstration the two sciences employ, while the latter is more concerned with the things that each science studies.


'Buridan and the Avicenna-Johnston Semantics'
Wilfrid Hodges (Queen Mary College, London)

In his recent PhD thesis (St Andrews 2015) Spencer Johnston gave a Kripke semantics for Buridan's divided modal logic and showed that it upholds all Buridan's claims of validity and invalidity in this logic.  It turns out that Johnston's semantics is formally equivalent to (i.e. a notational variant of) a translation of Buridan's modal logic into the dtz fragment of Avicenna's two-dimensional logic.  Since the relationship between Avicenna's alethic modal logic and his 2D logic is one of the major questions about his logic, one naturally asks whether his 2D logic does the same for his modal logic as Johnston's semantics does for Buridan's logic.  I think this is dead right. It explains many things, for example why Avicenna keeps emphasising that his 2D logic doesn't involve possible entities.  But some puzzles remain.

The next meeting will take place on 3rd November 2015 at The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB.

11:00-12:00: Marcio Augusto Damin Custodio (State University of Campinas)
Aquinas Reconstruction of Aristotle's Identity Thesis of Metaphysics VII, 6
 
12:00-13:00: Can Laurens Loewe (KU Leuven)
The Blessed Virgin and the Two Time-Series: The Limit Decision Problem in Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourçain
 
13:00-15:15: Lunch break      
 
15:15-16:15: Joseph Sternberg (University of Colorado)                         
Aquinas on the Relationship between the Vision and Delight in Perfect Happiness
 
16:15-16:45: Coffee break                      
 
16:45-17:45: Luigi Campi (Università degli Studi di Torino)
‘God is the rewarder not of nouns but adverbs’: Hunting Abelardian Ghosts


Abstracts

‘God is the rewarder not of nouns but adverbs’: Hunting Abelardian Ghosts
Luigi Campi (Università degli Studi di Torino)

My paper presents the first results of an on-going research I am undertaking on the phrase “God is Rewarder not of Nouns but of Adverbs”. Although it had a widespread circulation in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, it has been mostly overlooked by intellectual historians. As far as I can tell, its earlier appearance is found in Bernard of Parme’s Ordinary Gloss to the Gregorian Decretals (c. 1241). Intriguingly enough, Bernard ascribed such a phrase to “Io. quidam sapiens phantasma” (“Io., a certain wise ghost”). After surveying some stages of this phrase’s diffusion, the paper faces the question of its attribution. Both the hypotheses proposed, however, have not provided any positive textual evidence so far. Eventually, the paper takes into closer consideration Bernard’s excerpt and its textual components, and raises some questions concerning their connection with Abelard’s controversial ethical teaching.

Aquinas Reconstruction of Aristotle's Identity Thesis of Metaphysics VII, 6
Márcio A. Damin Custódio (State University of Campinas)

I intend to present my reconstruction of Aquinas lesson on Aristotle's Metaphysics, VII, 6 1031a15-1032a11, on the question whether the thing is identical to its essence. I hold that Aquinas provides a consistent interpretation of the identity theses, despite been guided by his understand that sensible substances must be considered as primary entities. I will argue that Aquinas holds the priority of sensible substances, and try to make it compatible with the treatment given to essence in Metaphysics Z, 6. I will consider especially those passages where it looks like Aristotle says that the priority must be given to the essence, identified with form, one of the hylomorfic components of sensible substances. In doing so, I also intend to show how Aquinas makes Metaphysics Z, 6 compatible with compromises assumed by him in Being and Essence, with Aristotle's Categories.

The Blessed Virgin and the Two Time-Series: The Limit Decision Problem in Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourçain
Can Laurens Loewe (KU Leuven)

In Physics VIII, 8, Aristotle discusses a problem that arises for the temporal characterization of changes between contradictory conditions, such as the change of a body from not-white to white. The problem has come to be known as the “limit decision problem”, and can be formulated as follows: when does a body that changes from, say, not white to white cease to be not white, and begin to be white? Intuitively, it seems very easy to assign the temporal
limits: the body has a last instant of being not white, and a first instant of being white. However, Aristotle finds this solution unacceptable because, on his theory of the continuum, no two instants can be immediate successors. As an alternative, Aristotle proposes that there is, in reality, only one temporal limit, and that this limit belongs to the posterior condition. On his view, there is, in a change from not white to white, a first instant of being white, but no last instant of being not white.
Since the pioneering work of Norman Kretzmann and Simo Knuuttila in the 1970s, many aspects of the scholastic discussion of Aristotle’s limit decision problem have been studied; and it is generally known that new non-Aristotelian solutions to this problem emerged (e.g., with Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, or Landulf Caraccioli). The goal of my paper is to examine two non-Aristotelian solutions that have not received any scholarly attention so far: the solutions provided by Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourçain. In their respective discussions of the sanctification of the Holy Virgin in their Sentences Commentaries, they both argue that a satisfactory answer to the limit decision problem has to take into account not only Aristotelian continuous time but also (non-Aristotelian) discrete time.
I will first consider why Hervaeus and Durandus think that discrete time needs to be considered. I will argue that they think this because they take discrete time to be the proper measure of corruptible substantial forms and static accidental forms (i.e., accidents that do not have temporal parts), and these forms are precisely the ones concerned by changes between contradictory conditions. Secondly, I will show that, for Hervaeus and Durandus, discrete time has some properties that continuous time does not have, one such property being that one instant immediately succeeds another. Accordingly, for them, the possibility emerges of defending the non-Aristotelian solution that there is a last instant of the prior condition as well as a first instant of the posterior condition, and they defend precisely this solution, as I will argue. Thirdly, I will show that despite their common approach, Hervaeus and Durandus differ greatly in their assessment of Aristotle’s solution to the limit decision problem. While Hervaeus argues that the Aristotelian solution can coexist with a solution in terms of discrete time because continuous and discrete time are two non-intersecting time- series, Durandus argues that the Aristotelian solution breaks down.

Aquinas on the Relationship between the Vision and Delight in Perfect Happiness
Joseph Sternberg (University of Colorado)

One vexed philosophical question that once enjoyed great esteem is this: in the Beatific Vision that the saints enjoy in heaven, does happiness (beatitudo) consist in the vision of God, in delight in God, or in a combination of the vision and the delight? The answer that one gives to this question apparently commits one to a view about what happiness is ultimately about. It has long been thought that Aquinas holds that happiness consists in the vision of God alone. In this essay, I argue that, on this important issue, Aquinas actually holds that happiness consists both in the vision of God and delight in God, but that – unlike some of his contemporaries – Aquinas unequivocally affirms that the vision is more important in happiness than the delight. After arguing for this interpretation, I consider the quite compelling account of perfect and imperfect happiness that follows from it.

The next meeting will take place on Friday 19 June 2015 at The Warburg Institute, London. 

11:00-12:00
John Marenbon (Cambridge University) 
Why the Long Middle Ages are important for a Real History of Philosophy

12:00-13:00
George Corbett (Cambridge University) 
Peraldus, Aquinas and the Tradition of the Seven Capital Vices

13:00-14:00
Lunch break 


14:00-15:00
Irena Cronin (University of California, Los Angeles)
Concerning Infinitizing Negation and Existence: A Solution to a Vague Case

15:00-16:00
Caterina Tarlazzi (Cambridge University) 
Is Socrates a Universal? Audacious Views in Early Twelfth-Century Realism

16:00-16:30
Coffee break 


16:30-17:30
Luca Gili (University of Leuven)
Aristotelian Plenitude: Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the Principle of Plenitude

The next Medieval Philosophy Network Meeting will take place at The Warburg Institute in London on Friday 13 March 2015. 


12:15-1:15pm                1st talk
Chris Martin (University of Auckland)
From Paris to Oxford and Back: Two Traditions in the Treatment of Propositionality, Negation and the Conditional in the Theory of Syncategoremata    

1:15pm-2:15pm             Lunch break

2.15pm-3:15pm            2nd talk
Marco Nievergelt (University of Lausanne)
Allegory and Epistemology: Roger Bacon and Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose

3.15pm-4:15pm            3rd talk
John Heil (Washington University in St Louis)
Accidents Unmoored

4.15pm-4:45pm            Coffee break

4:45pm-5:45pm            4th talk
Thomas Pink (King’s College London)
Suarez on canon law

 
Abstracts: 

From Paris to Oxford and Back: Two Traditions in the Treatment of Propositionality, Negation and the Conditional in the Theory of Syncategoremata

Chris Martin (Auckland University)

The first half of the twelfth century is one of the greatest periods in the history of logic and the centre of the logical world was Paris. Some years ago it was suggested that the ideas developed in Paris were transmitted by the beginning of the thirteenth century to Oxford where they were preserved while Parisian logicians developed the radical new theories of modism and speculative grammar. This thesis, dubbed by Sten Ebbesen OXYNAT, holds that the English tradition in the form developed by William of Ockham was eventually exported back to Paris and flowered there in the terminism of John Buridan. In this paper I will examine the treatment of propositionality, negation and the conditional in the treatises on syncategoremata written by William of Sherwood and Peter of Spain and show that we can indeed distinguish two distinct ways of treating these questions and that the ‘continental’ treatment found in Peter of Spain retains something of the highly sophisticated philosophical semantics of Peter Abaelard which is absent in the ‘English’ treatment of William of Sherwood.

Allegory and Epistemology: Roger Bacon and Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose

Marco Nievergelt (University of Lausanne)

Since the appearance of Gérard Paré’s studies in the 1940s, Jean de Meun’s familiarity with scholastic materials is widely accepted. The precise nature and deeper significance of Jean’s use of scholastic materials, however, remain to be understood. I propose a reading of the Roman de la Rose that highlights the importance of broadly epistemological concerns in the poem, arguing that such developments grow out of Jean’s engagement with a number of contemporary problems debated at the University of Paris and beyond. In particular I identify two broad areas of epistemological exploration: theories of cognition and sense perception, specifically the role of the sensible and intellectual species and the rise of perspectivist optics; and theories of signification, particularly concerning the status of metaphor and figurative speech. In both cases Roger Bacon’s often innovative and controversial theories appear to have served as major touchstones for Jean. But rather than seeing Bacon merely as one of the many ‘sources’ for the Roman de la Rose, I suggests that Jean’s allegorical poetics as a whole ultimately grow out of this deep, sustained engagement with Bacon. This has major implications for our understanding of the development of allegorical poetry and in the period 1270–1400, but also invites us to reconsider the philosophical texture of such literature, its relation with scholasticism more broadly, and the place of narrative allegory within an enlarged intellectual history of the later Middle Ages.

Accidents Unmoored

John Heil (Washington University in St Louis)

The paper begins with an avowal of the importance of the history of philosophy for philosophy. Attention then shifts to an interesting account of Abelard's conception of accidents advanced by Christopher Martin and John Marenbon, focusing on their comparison of Abelard's accidents with D. C. Williams's tropes. Reasons are given for thinking that the comparison is inapposite. The paper concludes with a plea for help on behalf of contemporary philosophers working in metaphysics.

Suarez on Canon Law

Thomas Pink (King’s College London)

Canon law is the humanly legislated positive law of the Church and, it seems, a parallel of civil law, the humanly legislated positive law of the State. How do the natures of Church and State involve similarities and differences between these two forms of human positive law? Canon law raised important questions about the relations between Church and State, and about the scope and function of positive law, both generally and for the special case of the Church. Suarez addressed these questions within the framework of a conception of positive law, both civil and canonical, as providing a mode of coercive instruction, and of the good of a community that positive law served as importantly determined by the beliefs of its members.

The next Medieval Philosophy Network Meeting will take place at The Warburg Institute in London on 14 November 2014. 

11:45am-12:45pm
Aileen Das (University of Warwick)
Bodies of Knowledge in the Arabic Middle Ages

12:45pm  Lunch

2.00pm-3:00pm  
Anna Marmodoro (University of Oxford)
Aquinas’ metaphysics of artefacts

3.00pm-4:00pm
Juhanna Toivanen (University of Jyväskylä)
Medieval Perspectives on Political Animality: Ants, Bees, Cranes and Humans

4.00pm-4:30pm  Coffee break

4:30pm-5:30pm   
Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco (University of Birmingham)
Legal Rule-Compliance Phenomenon Under the Lens of Anscombe’s Intention and Aquinas’s Philosophy of Action

5:30pm 
Conclusions

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.

Our next meeting will take place on the 28th February 2014 at The Warburg Institute, 2.30 until 6.00pm, meeting for lunch beforehand for those who wish. 

2:30-3:30pm   Alfonso Ganem (National University in Mexico City (UNAM)  - ‘Al-Farabi on Foreknowledge and Contingency’

3:30-4:30pm   Stephen Read (St Andrews) – ‘Curry paradoxes in medieval logic'

4:30-5:00pm   Coffee break

5:00-6:00pm   Sonja Schierbaum (Hamburg) – ‘Ockham and Chatton on demonstratives and (definite) descriptions’


Abstracts 

Alfonso Ganem – ‘Al-Farabi on Foreknowledge and Contingency’

The tensions between determinism and free will in the Medieval Arabic tradition were common within the main theological schools, namely, Mu'tazilites and Ash'arites. The major debate between these schools is focused on the causal nature of agents and the degree of responsibility that can be attributed to their actions. The Mu'tazilites held a non-deterministic position according to which human beings are the agents of their own actions and can be responsible for their practical consequences. On the other hand, the Ash'arites recognized God as the unique agent of every event in the world and, hence, human actions were considered as secondary causes determined by Divine Will. The presence of Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and Stoic philosophy in the Arabic context introduced new conceptual and methodological tools that modified the standard interpretation of the debate and allowed the formulation of new solutions. The influence of ancient discussions on the different conceptions of causality and agency, providence, and the distinction between different kinds of necessity and possibility, allowed the development of a set of arguments different from the ones sustained by the theological schools. Arabic philosophers knew several versions of the conflict between determinism and free will coming from the Greek tradition, from deterministic positions such as that of the Stoics, to compatibilist positions such as that of the Peripatetics. Al-Farabi's approach to this difficulty introduces relevant nuances. The aim of this paper is precisely to reconstruct and analyze Al-Farabi's compatibilist argument as is presented in the second section of his Long Commentary on Peri Hermeneias. There, Al-Farabi argues for the compatibility between the epistemic access of the First Cause to future events and the contingent nature of sublunary events. The argument can be presented as a dilemma: the first horn sustains that the actions of sub-lunar substances cannot be determined because of a “principle of contingency" that characterizes their nature; the second horn defends the epistemic privilege of a God whose omnipotence let him know everything that exists in reality without any deficiency or indeterminacy. The first horn is grounded in a reductio ab absurdum that proves the existence of a principle of contingency in all material substances, implying an indeterminate “truth value" of any proposition about the future that refers to particular individuals. Therefore, the “truth value" of propositions with particular quantifiers and future operators cannot be determined by any logical method or be known by any epistemic agent. The second horn depends on an emanationist model that would allow for epistemic access to the complete set of propositions. The Long Commentary on Peri Hermeneias does not provide a clear description on the mode the First Cause intellects the world or the propositions, but we can use some of the arguments of the Perfect State to complete the vision of Al-Farabi's argument. The answer to the dilemma will be a logical solution that harmonizes divine fore-knowledge with the principle of contingency. Intellection of the determinate truth value of propositions does not imply the necessary elimination of contingency in natural facts, because the material modality of possibility in propositions is not affected by divine intellection. Therefore if God knows that “Zaid will travel tomorrow" or that “there will be a sea battle tomorrow", the principle of contingency can be preserved because the material aspects that compose the fact are in themselves indeterminate, while divine knowledge intellects the causal relation between propositions that makes it possible to know the fact determinately at a propositional level. In the paper, I reconstruct Al-Farabi's attempt to harmonize divine knowledge and the contingency of sub-lunar substances.

Stephen Read – ‘Curry paradoxes in medieval logic'

Recent work on the semantic paradoxes has focussed on V-Curry, a validity version of Curry's paradox, originally a set-theoretic paradox, due to Haskell B. Curry. Variants on this paradox were known to fourteenth-century logicians, who proposed their own solutions. Thomas Bradwardine's solution depends on the idea that every sentence signifies many things, and a sentence's truth depends on things' being wholly as it signifies. This definition of truth involves a rethinking of the T-scheme or truth-equivalence attributed to Alfred Tarski. Bradwardine's solution is underpinned by a novel theory of meaning, based on his claim that a sentence signifies everything that follows from it. The upshot is that solving the Curry and other semantic paradoxes does not require revision of logic, thus saving logic from paradox.

Sonja Schierbaum – ‘Ockham and Chatton on demonstratives and (definite) descriptions’

Walter Chatton is commonly considered as one of William Ockham’s earliest and most vehement critics. For instance, Chatton criticizes and finally rejects Ockham’s well known conception of intuition as a kind of intellectual perception of particulars (this dog, this blue spot). In this paper I want to discuss some implications of either embracing or rejecting intuition for the conception of our ways of thinking about particulars. I argue that Ockham denies that one can think about a particular only by means of some description. The point is that in his view knowing a thing a by intuition does not imply knowing a to be the referent of any description. Rather, knowing a by intuition implies merely the possibility of demonstrative identification. By contrast, it (partly) follows from Chatton’s rejection of intuition that according to him thinking about a particular always involves some description, even in case of demonstrative identification. The aim is to give a general assessment of the plausibility of these two positions regarding the “descriptive” and “non-descriptive” ways of thinking about particulars.

The next meeting of the Medieval Philosophy Network in the UK will take place on the 15th of November, at the Warburg Institute in London. 

Program

12.30pm - Lunch

1.30pm - 1st talk
Dr György Gereby, Central European University (Budapest) - Duns Scotus on the Eternity of the World

2.30pm - 2nd talk
Dr Gabriele Galluzzo, University of Exeter - Aquinas’s Anti-Reductionist Mereology

3.30pm - 3rd talk
Dr Alexander D. Carruth, Durham University - How should we understand ‘eminent containment’?

4.30pm - Coffee break

5.00pm - 4th talk
Han Thomas Adriaenssen, University of Groningen - Peter Olivi on Conceptual Thought

6:00pm - Close


Please contact power@philosophy.ox.ac.uk if you wish to join in for lunch in a nearby informal restaurant (venue tbc) at 12:30 pm. Lunch is at one’s own expense.

All those wishing to have lunch should meet at the Warburg (outside or in the front hall if wet) at 12.25 and we shall go to the cafeteria restaurant just round the corner.

The next meeting will take place on Thursday 28th February, 12.00-16.00, at The Warburg Institute, London. 

Programme 

12.00 Tommaso Alpina (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa): Intellection, Active Intellect and Intellectual Memory in Avicenna

This paper aims at providing a model of interpretation of the Avicennian doctrine of human intellection. The main problem about human intellection concerns the way in which Avicenna explains it in two famous chapters of his De anima, namely chapter II. 2, where a general account of his theory of abstraction is provided (taºrÍd), and chapter V. 5 where, in the case of the first acquisition of an intelligible form, the abstractive paradigm is combined with an emanatist view, in which the intervention of the Active Intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘‘Ál) seems to play a decisive role. The claim I defend in this paper is that both abstraction and emanation, taken separately, are necessary but not sufficient conditions to explain how the human intellect acquires the intelligible forms. The examination of the particulars stored in the imagination by the human intellect triggers off the process of abstraction of the immaterial core from the particulars, then the light of the Active Intellect intervenes to guarantee the correctness of the process of abstraction and the universality of the forms abstracted. This role of guarantor which the Active Intellect plays at the epistemological level, is related to its role of collector of intelligible forms at the ontological level, since in chapter V. 6 Avicenna denies the possibility of intellectual memory. The human intellect has only a ‘procedural’[1] role: intellect, in other words, does not produce the contents of knowledge by itself, but combines or separates intelligible forms that are stored in the Active Intellect to which the human intellect itself ascends only when it is actually thinking them, so becoming ‘acquired intellect’ (‘aql mustafÁd).

12.40 Alisa Kunitz-Dick (University of Cambridge): ‘Omne namque quod est, aut est per aliquid aut per nihil’: Anselm’s Third Argument for God’s Existence in the Monologion, its Metaphysical Foundations, and its Immediate Historical Influence

This paper examines Anselm's third argument for the existence of God, located mainly in chapter three of the Monologion.  I argue that, although the soundness of the demonstration as a whole is questionable, the first division begins skilfully in an ontologically neutral manner, and, using a sophisticated argument concerning the definition of 'nothing', justifies and sets up Anselm's own theory of causation (per aliquid).  When this argument is considered historically, it does not appear to have been derived from any earlier sources or to have had any great influence, except that Richard of St Victor employed a poorly constructed variation of it.

13.20 Lunch Break

14.20 Sarah Hogarth (University of Western Ontario): Thomas Bradwardine’s Account of Future Contingents

In his treatise De futuris contingentibus (On future contingents), Thomas Bradwardine presents an interestingly original account of future contingents in opposition to that of William Ockham. The problem for both thinkers, of course, is how to go about reconciling God's foreknowledge with the real contingency of future events. According to Ockham's highly influential account, this is possible because although God has knowledge in the present of future contingent events, the fact that the subject matter of that knowledge is future and contingent makes the knowledge itself future and contingent in some special sense; thus, Ockham denies that the sort of inferences we may make about the necessity inhering in present events can in any way apply to God's present knowledge of things future, or in turn to the objects of that knowledge. Bradwardine is not satisfied with this solution, which he considers to be incompatible with divine immutability, and instead proposes a solution resting on the distinction between absolute and ordered (or ordained – ordinata) power. Bradwardine argues that God's knowledge of future events is enacted by his ordered power, and that relative to this power, the events of his knowledge are indeed necessary; however, this relative necessity says nothing of the events' absolute necessity. So Bradwardine employs Boethius' distinction between conditional and absolute necessity: but what makes his account markedly original and significant is the added distinction between God's absolute and ordered power. Somewhat surprisingly, Bradwardine's De futuris contingentibus has received almost no scholarly attention. In 1979, Jean-François Genest produced an edited text of the treatise; however, apart from Genest's introduction to the text, and a subsequent volume in which Bradwardine figures as a foil for discussion of Buckingham's philosophy, I can find no published treatment of this fascinating work. Before his death, Norman Kretzmann began translating  portions of Bradwardine's treatise into English (copies of this have circulated in unpublished form), but this project was never completed, and Kretzmann never wrote anything else on the topic. Calvin Normore has discussed Bradwardine's criticisms of Ockham's account as found in De causa Dei, but entirely neglects to mention the solution presented in Defuturis contingentibus.  What I therefore intend to achieve in this paper is a pioneering presentation of Bradwardine's account of future contingents, highlighting his criticism of Ockham and his divergence from other previous accounts.

15.10 John Marenbon (University of Cambridge): Why Leibniz misunderstood Abelard

Leibniz is well known for having claimed that God must create the best of all possible universes and then having to struggle, perhaps unsuccessfully, to avoid determinism. Over 500 years before, Peter Abelard put forward a very similar position and also argued, possibly more successfully than Leibniz, that it was compatible with there being contingency in the universe. Leibniz knew Abelard's argument and discusses it in his Theodicy. Yet he does not see Abelard as a precursor, but dismisses him as someone who is merely playing with words. My talk will discuss this strange misunderstanding. I shall explain what Abelard did in fact argue, and then show how Leibniz was led by the late medieval reception of Abelard's argument into misunderstanding his position.

16.00 Meeting ends – Tea will be available in the Warburg Institute common room