The text represents the author’s responses to the contributors who have addressed issues in my 2015 book, Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia, published by Oxford University Press.

There is a traditional conception of knowledge but it is not the Justified True Belief analysis Gettier attacked. On the traditional view, knowledge consists in having a belief that bears a discernible mark of truth. A mark of truth is a truth-entailing property: a property that only true beliefs can have. It is discernible if one can always tell that a belief has it, that is, a sufficiently attentive subject believes that a belief has it if and only if it (...) has it. Requiring a mark of truth makes the view infallibilist. Requiring it to be discernible makes the view internalist. I call the view Classical Infallibilism. (shrink)

Kirja-arvio: Malin Grahn-Wilder : Skeptisismi: Epäilyn ja etsimisen filosofia. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 2016. 453 sivua. Mitä on tieto ja kellä sitä on? Voimmeko tietää miten asiat todella ovat? Voimmeko ylipäätään tietää mitään? Malin Grahn-Wilderin toimittama teos Skeptisismi on kattava läpileikkaus skeptisismin historiasta antiikin juuriltaan aina nykyajan keskusteluihin saakka. Samalla se sisältää ensimmäistä kertaa suomeksi käännettynä useammankin filosofian historialle ehdottoman olennaisen kirjoituksen.

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I approach the topic (...) from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (shrink)

هدف اصلی این پژوهش تحلیل «وجود» نزد کانت با کمک‌گرفتن از دیدگاه ولف، هیوم، و فلاسفۀ اسلامی دربارۀ وجود است. با توجه به این‌که کانت در نقد عقل محض در دو موضع به تحلیل «وجود» می‌پردازد، ابتدا در بخش تحلیل استعلایی در مبحث «مقولات محض فاهمه»، به‌منزلۀ یکی از مقولاتِ وجهه‌نظر «جهت»، و دیگربار در بخش دیالکتیک استعلایی در نقد برهان وجودی، این مقاله با هدف ارائۀ تبیینی جامع و منسجم از این دو موضع نشان می‌دهد که کانت در دیالکتیک (...) استعلایی، برای اجتناب از ایدئالیسم جزمی و ایدئالیسم شکاکانه، داده‌شدگی وجود را متأثر از هیوم برای نقد برهان وجودی به‌کار می‌گیرد، اما در تحلیل استعلایی که بر فهم ما از وجود متمرکز است، متأثر از ولف که برای او وجود امری فرعی و مجهول است، وجود را از مراتب علم ما به گزاره‌ها می‌داند. هم‌چنین با برقراری نوعی هم‌ارزی ابتدایی میان «اصالت وجود در حکمت متعالیه» و «داده‌شدگی وجود نزد هیوم»، و «اصالت ماهیت و اعتباری‌بودن مفهوم وجود نزد سهروردی» و «متمم بودن آن نزد ولف» از ابزارهای مفهومی برای تحلیل وجود در حکمت متعالیه و حکمت اشراق، هم‌چون «معقولات ثانیۀ فلسفی»، «زیادت وجود بر ماهیت»، و «جهات ثلاث» برای تبیین وجود نزد کانت کمک گرفته می‌شود. (shrink)