The Quaestiones super Physica Aristotelis traditionally attributed to Iohannes Canonicus survive in over 35 manuscripts and at least 8 printings from 1475 to 1520. Yet historians have disagreed about the century, the place of origin, the name and the institutional position of the author. This brief paper combines old and new evidence proving that the text was authored by an Augustinian Canon Regular of the Cathedral of Tortosa named Francesc Marbres, a Catalan from Barcelona, while he was Master of Arts (...) at the University of Toulouse around 1330. (shrink)

In Lyon in 1497 Badius printed the Sentences questions and other material attributed to the Dominican Robert Holcot, active at Oxford in the early 1330s. It turns out that the so-called De imputabi...

In Lyon in 1497 Badius printed the Sentences questions and other material attributed to the Dominican Robert Holcot, active at Oxford in the early 1330s. It turns out that the so-called De imputabi...

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 335-338, January 2020.

This article examines the author, date, place, sources and reception of the Quaestiones libri Physicorum by the Catalan Augustinian Canon Francesc Marbres, usually attributed to “John the Canon.” The Quaestiones are perhaps the most influential philosophical work by an Augustinian Canon in the university era. From Barcelona, Marbres became a Canon of Tortosa Cathedral, a Master of Arts at Toulouse, and an advanced student in theology, probably at Paris, where he died. In his Quaestiones, compiled around 1330, his main sources (...) were works, primarily Sentential commentaries, by Franciscan theologians active at Paris from John Duns Scotus to Gerald Odonis. The Quaestiones survive in only two fourteenth- century manuscripts, described here, but at least 37 manuscripts and eight printings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries attest to its later reception, which is traced down to the present day. Appended to the article is an annotated question- and citation-list. In part II of this... (shrink)

This is Part II of a two-part study on the questions on Aristotles’ Physics by Francesc Marbres, the artist commonly known as “John the Canon.” Although written around 1330, only two fourteenth-century manuscripts preserve the work, but it became so popular around 1450 that dozens of fifteenth-century manuscripts containing the work survive and it was printed eight times from 1475 to 1520. Here the manuscripts and early prints are described, and then an attempt is made to trace the tradition of (...) the text using structural differences, the colophons and variant readings in the question-titles and small passages. These three sets of data turn out to be insufficient for constructing a stemma; instead they provide evidence of extensive contamination, suggesting that many scribes and printers employed more than one witness. This conclusion reinforces what we learn from marginalia and from information about the Oxford curriculum: the questions on the Physics by the mysterious “John the Canon” played an active rol... (shrink)

This is Part II of a two-part study on the questions on Aristotles’ Physics by Francesc Marbres, the artist commonly known as “John the Canon.” Although written around 1330, only two fourteenth-century manuscripts preserve the work, but it became so popular around 1450 that dozens of fifteenth-century manuscripts containing the work survive and it was printed eight times from 1475 to 1520. Here the manuscripts and early prints are described, and then an attempt is made to trace the tradition of (...) the text using structural differences, the colophons and variant readings in the question-titles and small passages. These three sets of data turn out to be insufficient for constructing a stemma; instead they provide evidence of extensive contamination, suggesting that many scribes and printers employed more than one witness. This conclusion reinforces what we learn from marginalia and from information about the Oxford curriculum: the questions on the Physics by the mysterious “John the Canon” played an active rol... (shrink)

Himbert of Garda was a little-known Franciscan theologian who studied at Paris around 1320 and probably served as Francis of Meyronnes’ secretary. His commentary on the Sentences provides precious insights on the development of Franciscan thought at Paris, connecting Francis of Meyronnes’ refined presentations of doctrine with raw academic debates between bachelors and masters in the Faculty of Theology. An appendix presents Himbert’s discussion of intrinsic degrees in Book I d.36, and both redactions of his treatment of the formal distinction (...) in the context of the divine attributes in Book I d.8, as well as parallel texts from Francis of Meyronnes. A second appendix provides a full question- and citation-list for Himbert’s commentary on the Sentences. (shrink)

Since 1991 the Franciscan Francis of Marchia, master of theology at the University of Paris (fl. 1320), has begun receiving his due attention as an exciting and innovative thinker. This volume examines his doctrines in cosmology, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.

Building on the recent scholarship of Bonnie Kent, Christian Trottmann, and especially L.M. de Rijk, this volume gathers together studies by other specialists on Odonis, covering his ideas in economics, logic, metaphysics, ethics, natural ...

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

Christopher Hookway; I *—The Presidential Address: Questions of Context, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 1–16, h.

A growing number of epistemologists have endorsed the Ignorance Norm for Inquiry. Roughly, this norm says that one should not inquire into a question unless one is ignorant of its answer. I argue that, in addition to ignorance, proper inquiry requires a certain kind of knowledge. Roughly, one should not inquire into a question unless one knows it has a true answer. I call this the Knowledge Norm for Inquiry. Proper inquiry walks a fine line, holding knowledge that there is (...) an answer in the left hand and ignorance of the answer in the right. (shrink)

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very (...) closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)

The central question in political philosophy is whether political states have the right to coerce their constituents and whether citizens have a moral duty to obey the commands of their state. In this 2005 book, Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons defend opposing answers to this question. Wellman bases his argument on samaritan obligations to perform easy rescues, arguing that each of us has a moral duty to obey the law as his or her fair share of the (...) communal samaritan chore of rescuing our compatriots from the perils of the state of nature. Simmons counters that this, and all other attempts to explain our duty to obey the law, fail. He defends a position of philosophical anarchism, the view that no existing state is legitimate and that there is no strong moral presumption in favor of obedience to, or compliance with, any existing state. (shrink)

Causation is a topic of perennial philosophical concern. As well as being of intrinsic interest, almost all philosophical concepts — such as knowledge, beauty, and moral responsibility — involve a causal dimension. Nonetheless, attempts to provide a satisfactory account of the nature of causation have typically led to barrages of counterexamples. I hope to show that a number of the difficulties plaguing theories of causation have a common source.Most philosophical theories of causation describe a binary relation between cause and effect, (...) or at any rate, a relation that reduces to such a binary relation when certain background information is held fixed. Indeed, most theories provide the same general account of when this relation holds: in order to evaluate whether C causes E, we must make a comparison between two cases, which we may neutrally label as C and ∼C. Where theories of causation differ, of course, is in precisely what is being so compared. Regularity theories of causation require a comparison between what actually happens whenever C occurs, and what actually happens, elsewhere and elsewhen, when C does not occur. (shrink)

We argue that S is in a position to know that p iff S can know that p. Thus, what makes position-to-know-ascriptions true is just a special case of what makes ability-ascriptions true: compossibility. The novelty of our compossibility theory of epistemic modality lies in its subsuming epistemic modality under agentive modality, the modality characterizing what agents can do.

Christopher Kirwan; III*—How Strong are the Objections to Essence?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 43–60, https.

In Rights Forfeiture and Punishment, Christopher Heath Wellman argues that those who seek to defend the moral permissibility of punishment should shift their focus from general justifying aims to moral side constraints. On Wellman's view, punishment is permissible just in case the wrongdoer has forfeited her right against punishment.

First published in 2005, A Theory of Secession: The Case for Political Self-Determination offers an unapologetic defense of the right to secede. Christopher Heath Wellman argues that any group has a moral right to secede as long as its political divorce will leave it and the remainder state in a position to perform the requisite political functions. He explains that there is nothing contradictory about valuing legitimate states, while permitting their division. Once political states are recognized as valuable because (...) of the functions that they are uniquely suited to perform, it becomes apparent that the territorial boundaries of existing states might permissably be redrawn as long as neither the process, nor the result of this reconfiguration, interrupts the production of the crucial political benefits. Thus, if one values self-determination, then one has good reason to conclude that people have a right to determine their political boundaries. (shrink)

A long line of epistemologists including Sosa (2021), Feldman (2002), and Chisholm (1977) have argued that, at least for a certain class of questions that we take up, we should (or should aim to) close inquiry iff by closing inquiry we would meet a unique epistemic standard. I argue that no epistemic norm of this general form is true: there is not a single epistemic standard that demarcates the boundary between inquiries we are forbidden and obligated to close. In short, (...) such norms are false because they are insensitive to the potentially ambitious epistemic goals that agents may permissibly bring to bear on an inquiry. Focusing particularly on knowledge-oriented versions of the norm, I argue that ignorance has a positive role to play in epistemic life by licensing prolonged inquiry into questions that we especially care about. (shrink)

When any man, even in political society, renders himself by his crimes obnoxious to the public, he is punished by the laws in his goods and person; that is, the ordinary rules of justice are, with regard to him, suspended for a moment, and it becomes equitable to inflict on him, for the benefit of society, what otherwise he could not suffer without wrong or injury?

Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of arguers and arguments along with various theoretical perspectives. Less attention has been given to the third feature of any argumentative situation - the audience. This book fills that gap by studying audience reception to argumentation and the problems that come to light as a result of this shift in focus. Christopher W. Tindale advances the tacit theories of several earlier thinkers by addressing the central problems connected with audience considerations (...) in argumentation, problems that earlier philosophical theories overlook or inadequately accommodate. The main tools employed in exploring the central issues are drawn from contemporary philosophical research on meaning, testimony, emotion and agency. These are then combined with some of the major insights of recent rhetorical work in argumentation to advance our understanding of audiences and suggest avenues for further research. (shrink)

Can we understand what makes someone the same person without understanding what it is to be a person? Prereflectively we might not think so, but philosophers often accord these questions separate treatments, with personal-identity theorists claiming the first question and free-will theorists the second. Yet much of what is of interest to a person—the possibility of survival over time, compensation for past hardships, concern for future projects, or moral responsibility—is not obviously intelligible from the perspective of either question alone. Marya (...) Schechtman encourages us to adopt a more unified perspective. (shrink)

Christopher Bennett presents a theory of punishment grounded in the practice of apology, and in particular in reactions such as feeling sorry and making amends. He argues that offenders have a 'right to be punished' - that it is part of taking an offender seriously as a member of a normatively demanding relationship that she is subject to retributive attitudes when she violates the demands of that relationship. However, while he claims that punishment and the retributive attitudes are the (...) necessary expression of moral condemnation, his account of these reactions has more in common with restorative justice than traditional retributivism. He argues that the most appropriate way to react to crime is to require the offender to make proportionate amends. His book is a rich and intriguing contribution to the debate over punishment and restorative justice. (shrink)

Fallacies and Argument Appraisal presents an introduction to the nature, identification, and causes of fallacious reasoning, along with key questions for evaluation. Drawing from the latest work on fallacies as well as some of the standard ideas that have remained relevant since Aristotle, Christopher Tindale investigates central cases of major fallacies in order to understand what has gone wrong and how this has occurred. Dispensing with the approach that simply assigns labels and brief descriptions of fallacies, Tindale provides fuller (...) treatments that recognize the dialectical and rhetorical contexts in which fallacies arise. This volume analyzes major fallacies through accessible, everyday examples. Critical questions are developed for each fallacy to help the student identify them and provide considered evaluations. (shrink)

The current literature on norms of inquiry features two families of norms: norms that focus on an inquirer’s ignorance and norms that focus on the question’s soundness. I argue that, given a factive conception of ignorance, it’s possible to derive a soundness-style norm from a version of the ignorance norm. A crucial lemma in the argument is that just as one can only be ignorant of a proposition if the proposition is true, so one can only be ignorant with respect (...) to a question if the question is sound. (shrink)

Aristotle attaches particular significance to the homomyny of many of the central concepts in philosophy and science: that is, to the diversity of ways of being that are denoted by a single concept. Shields here investigates and evaluates Aristotle's approach to questions about homonymy, characterizing the metaphysical and semantic commitments necessary to establish the homonymy of a given concept. Then, in a series of case studies, he examines in detail some of Aristotle's principal applications of homonymy--to the body, sameness and (...) and oneness, life, goodness, and being. This first full-length study of a central aspect of Aristotle's thought will interest philosophers working in a number of areas. (shrink)

Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation (...) of the biological realm with metaphysical rigour, must we depose our mechanistic ontology for failing to properly “carve at the joints” of organisms? In this paper, I challenge the legitimacy of that claim: not only can the theoretical benefits offered by a process ontology be had without it, they cannot be sufficiently grounded without the metaphysical underpinning of the very mechanisms which processes purport to replace. The biological realm, I argue, remains one best understood as under the governance of mechanistic principles. (shrink)