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Spring 2013 Meeting

2/7/2013

 
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

Autumn 2012 Meeting

9/23/2012

 
Our Autumn 2012 meeting will take place on Friday 9th November, 2.00-6.00 pm, at The Warburg Institute, London (directions to the Warburg here). 

Programme 

2.00  Riccardo Strobino - From Themistius to Al-Fārābī (and beyond): an excursus on Avicenna’s sources in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics
 
3.00  Stephen Clark - Gregory Palamas: Nominalist or NeoPlatonist?
 
4.00  Coffee break

4:30  Sydney Penner - On Polyadic Accidents

5:30 General discussion about the format of next meeting and the development of the group's website. 
 
6.00  End of meeting

Abstracts of each of the papers are given below. 

There will be an inexpensive light lunch available from 1.00. It is not necessary to register for this event and all are welcome. We should be grateful, however, if you could let us know whether you would like to have lunch, so that we can plan for the numbers (it will be simplest to ask you to pay at the time, in cash or by cheque). If you would like to do so, please contact Anna Marmodoro. 

Abstracts
 
Riccardo Strobino - From Themistius to Al-Fārābī (and beyond): an excursus on Avicenna’s sources in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics
 
I shall discuss the relationship between the two known Arabic translations of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (by Abū Bishr Mattā and by an anonymous translator) and Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Burhān along with his debt to earlier Arabic sources (Al-Fārābī) and the ancient commentary tradition (Themistius and Philoponus). I shall also make some comments on the Renaissance Latin translations of Averroes’ Middle and Long Commentary on Aristotle’s work, as they are interestingly, albeit indirectly, related to the history of its transmission from Greek into Arabic, through the mediation of Hebrew.
 
Stephen Clark - Gregory Palamas: Nominalist or NeoPlatonist?
                                                                                                           
A preliminary discussion of an argument of Palamas (1296-1359) in 150 Chapters: Palamas here seems to argue that only particulars (only particular human beings, for example) have substantive, active existence, and that 'the universal "man"', as it 'does not think, does not hold opinions, does not see' (and so forth), entirely lacks 'actual subsistence' ($ 136). This would seem to be at odds with other orthodox propositions. I propose instead that his argument concludes that 'Man' is not an abstract universal, but is instead a substantial form, active in many individuals. In this he closely resembles the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi, though it is unlikely - judging from Palamas' own account of his Turkish captivity - that there was any real philosophical interaction between the two traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam. Both traditions have Neoplatonic roots.

Sydney Penner - On Polyadic Accidents

Medieval philosophers commonly assume that accidents cannot have more than one subject of inherence. Aquinas, for example, when he considers the view that a relation is like a road between the relata, dismisses the view on grounds that it is impossible 'because one accident is not in two subjects'. The claim is not obviously true and would face significant opposition were it presented to a group of contemporary analytic philosophers. So why was the claim so widely accepted by medieval philosophers? The claim, unfortunately, was used as a premise a great deal more often than defended as a conclusion, but in this talk I want to consider some reasons that might have led medieval philosophers to accept the claim.  

Inaugural Meeting

9/17/2012

 
The first meeting took place on 7th June at The British Academy, London. The speakers were Sten Ebbesen, Cecilia Trifogli, and Peter Adamson, with book reviews by Riccardo Strobino, Anna Marmodoro, and John Marenbon.

Programme

1.30  Introduction:  Anna Marmodoro (Oxford) and John Marenbon (Cambridge)

1.35  Guest Speaker’s Address: Sten Ebbesen (Copenhagen):  The Aristotelian Tradition

(Discussion)

2.50  Tea/coffee break

3.15  Book Reviews: 

Riccardo Strobino (Cambridge/Bochum), Avicenna,  Deliverance: Logic, Translation and Notes by Asad Q. Ahmed, Introduction by Tony Street, Oxford 2011 (Studies in Islamic Philosophy); 

Anna Marmodoro; John Marenbon, Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274-167, Oxford 2011.

4.00   Cecilia Trifogli (Oxford): Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on the Subject of Thinking and the Status of the Human Soul

Peter Adamson (KCL):  The Ethical Treatment of Animals in Islamic Philosophy 

5.15   Final remarks and plans for further meetings

5.30   Meeting ends
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