This book is a defence of the philosophy of common sense in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore, drawing on the work of Aristotle, evolutionary biology and psychology, and historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy. It defines and explores common sense beliefs, and defends them from challenges from prominent philosophers.

The purpose of this article is to show the contribution of recent Thomistic epistemology - that is, an epistemology rooted in the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas - makes to contemporary philosophy of religion. In particular, I show how recent philosophers and theologians (most of them of a distinctly analytic persuasion) are appropriating insights in Aquinas’s philosophical theology in order to address perennial epistemological issues: most broadly, how it is that human persons know the world as well as the divine. (...) One of the main conclusions of the article is that recent Thomistic epistemology (including the various species of recent Thomistic epistemology) offers powerful resources for properly understanding both the mind-world and mind-God relationships. (shrink)

Aquinas’ famous comments in his early Scriptum on the Sentences (In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3) regarding the intellect’s apprehension of essence and esse have traditionally been interpreted as grounding Aquinas’ doctrine on the judgment of esse. For Aquinas, it appears, what the intellect apprehends in a simple concept is essence. Since esse, for him, is not an essence, it cannot, on the received view, be the object of conceptualization. Therefore, esse is grasped by the intellect only (...) in judgment. The claim that no genuine concept of esse is possible, however, is inconsistent with Aquinas’ theory of signification. A term’s signification is constituted, at least in part, in its “signing relation” with some “concept” in the mind. If, as on the traditional reading, there is no concept of esse, the term ‘esse’ is left without signification. To respond that the term ‘esse’ signs, not a concept, but the judgment in which esse is apprehended is in direct conflict with Aquinas’ claim elsewhere that no term, including ‘ens’ and ‘esse’, signifies a judgment. I propose an alternative interpretation to In I Sent., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3, one that allows for the possibility of a conceptual apprehension of esse. The alternative reading explains Aquinas’ remarks there in light of the theoretical context of the discussion, in particular the theory of propositions and their objects. I show how and why Aquinas develops a distinctive theory of the object of the proposition, that it is concerned with “the esse of a thing” as a complex. Although this complex includes the simple act of being, as for the traditional position (contrary to its major critics), it cannot be reduced to anything simple. Despite the Sentences’ affirmation of a real distinction between a thing’s esse and essence, to which correspond two different operations of the intellect, it does not follow that the human intellect cannot conceive esse, just as it conceives essences, in a simple conception. (shrink)

State of the art paper on the topic realism/anti-realism. The first part of the paper elucidates the notions of existence and independence of the metaphysical characterization of the realism/anti-realism dispute. The second part of the paper presents a critical taxonomy of the most important positions and doctrines in the contemporary literature on the domains of science and mathematics: scientific realism, scientific anti-realism, constructive empiricism, structural realism, mathematical Platonism, mathematical indispensability, mathematical empiricism, intuitionism, mathematical fictionalism and second philosophy.

This thesis is an examination and critique of naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. Phenomenal character refers to the distinctive quality that perceptual and sensational experiences seem to have; it is identified with 'what it is like' to undergo experiences. The central claims of representationalism are that phenomenal character is identical with the content of experience and that all representational states, bearing appropriate relations to the cognitive system, are conscious experiences. These claims are taken to explain both how conscious experiential (...) states arise and their nature. After examining the desiderata for naturalistic explanations, I argue that theories which ascribe nonconceptual content to experiences are the most plausible versions of representationalism. Further, causal covariation and teleological theories yield distinctive and interesting representationalist positions, hence, they become the focus of this study. To assess representationalism, I investigate whether all differences in phenomenal character can be correlated with differences in content. I claim that a useful distinction can be drawn between implicit and explicit content, which allows one to best describe the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. I then argue that ambiguous figures show that two experiences can have the same content but different phenomenal character. I explicate the Inverted Earth hypothesis and claim that to identify content and phenomenal character, representationalists either have to condone the possibility of philosophical zombies, or hold that people lack authoritative first-person knowledge of their current experiences. Both these positions are unpalatable. Finally, I argue that representationalists cannot ascribe contents to experiences of novel colours to account for their phenomenal character. I also question, in light of dissociation phenomena, whether there is one distinctive relationship that all experiences bear to the cognitive system. I conclude that phenomenal character cannot be identical with the type of content under investigation, and that naturalistic representationalist theories cannot fully explain conscious experience. (shrink)

This paper examines Nietzsche’s views on truth and knowledge in the context of both his rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself and his perspectivism. It is argued that Nietzsche’s principal contention with the thing-in-itself centres round the dissociation of truth and justification. The paper argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism, understood as an epistemic thesis, sows the seeds for the overcoming of this sceptical dissociation.