The view of Aristotle and Brentano that ‘true’ applies straightforwardly to statements (judgments, beliefs, propositions) and derivatively to other things makes for awkward and unintuitive definitions in the cases of derived truth. This is corrected by construing ‘true’ as applying analogically to statements and other things. Under this view, six senses of ‘true’ are distinguished. Following the logic of analogy, these senses are partly the same and partly different. These six senses also exhibit an analogy of proportionality. This yields three (...) groups, paired as follows: moral truth is to sentenial truth as productive truth is to ontological truth as cultural truth is to lawful truth.But behind every analogical prediction is a derivative predication. This implies that there is a primary referent of ‘true’ behind moral, productive and cultural truth on the one hand and sentential, ontological and lawful truth on the other. In the case of the former three, it is evidently the human mind. In the case of the latter three, a reasonable hypothesis, shared by Aquinas, is that it is God’s mind. (shrink)

Construing all efficient causes as beginning and ceasing with their effects invites the dilemma that a given effect or event either always occurs or neveroccurs. One escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, according temporal priority of causes to their effects in the case of theformer. In the case of human making and doing, where the two efficient causes belong to the same subject, the two are supplemented by a final cause whichserves to link or to mediate (...) them. This it does by drawing out or actuating the subsidiary cause which exists potentially in the basic cause. Arguing from analogy,can it be argued that, just when basic and subsidiary efficient causes belong to the same non-human subject in nature, they must likewise be supplemented byfinal causes if the potentiality of subsidiary causes in basic causes is to be drawn out and made actual? Surprising though it might seem to some, the answer tothis question is yes. To show this, I first place efficient causes in a dilemma. Next I show how one escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, making the former temporally precede the latter. These two causes in some cases need to be linked, and this, I argue, requires a cause of another type, a final cause. (shrink)

Construing all efficient causes as beginning and ceasing with their effects invites the dilemma that a given effect or event either always occurs or neveroccurs. One escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, according temporal priority of causes to their effects in the case of theformer. In the case of human making and doing, where the two efficient causes belong to the same subject, the two are supplemented by a final cause whichserves to link or to mediate (...) them. This it does by drawing out or actuating the subsidiary cause which exists potentially in the basic cause. Arguing from analogy,can it be argued that, just when basic and subsidiary efficient causes belong to the same non-human subject in nature, they must likewise be supplemented byfinal causes if the potentiality of subsidiary causes in basic causes is to be drawn out and made actual? Surprising though it might seem to some, the answer tothis question is yes. To show this, I first place efficient causes in a dilemma. Next I show how one escapes the dilemma by distinguishing basic and subsidiary efficient causes, making the former temporally precede the latter. These two causes in some cases need to be linked, and this, I argue, requires a cause of another type, a final cause. (shrink)

To borrow a by now worn out example from Bergmann, take a pair of colored spots in a visual field. Call them and. Suppose that is green while is red. According to Bergmann, we are presented with no less than ten entities in this perceptual occurrence, four of which are existents and six of which are subsistents. The existents break down into two kinds, i.e., simple properties and simple particulars. Green and red make up the properties, while the two things (...) that have these same qualities comprise the bare individuals. The subsistents include: two instances of the "relation" of exemplification, two instances of the "property" of universality, and two instances of the "property" of individuality. The quotes around 'property' and 'relation' indicate that the entities referred to in each case are not ordinary properties or relations. More positively, though perhaps roughly, universality and individuality are formal as opposed to material properties, while exemplification is a formal as opposed to a material relation. Notice just in passing that Bergmann's assay of this perceptual situation accords some kind of ontological status to at least some aspects of the world's form. Taking Wittgenstein's celebrated metaphor "Im Sachverhalt hangen die Gegenstande ineinander, wie die Glieder einer Kette" to mean that the world's form has no ontological status of any sort, Bergmann outspokenly puts himself in opposition to the author of Tractatus. (shrink)

To turn first then to his account of Bergmann's distinction between dependent and independent presentation, Baker observes that if Bergmann's dependent presentation turns out to be a form of knowledge and not a form of experience, then Bergmann is being inconsistent in holding that entities like universality and exemplification are dependently presented to us while simultaneously advocating a basic empiricism. For the empiricist demands that all claims as to the existence of an object be grounded in experience. But, Baker argues, (...) since we are not acquainted with entities like exemplification, universality or essentiality, the concept of dependent presentation in Bergmann's later philosophy does indeed turn out to be a form of knowledge and not a form of experience. Attempting a definition of dependent presentation, Baker writes. (shrink)

Defenders of the evolutionary origin of human beings hold that humankind has in its entirety evolved out of lower life forms. This opposes the idea of creation under which at least one aspect of human beings has not evolved out of pre-existing material things or states of thing but has been produced out of nothing by God. It is here argued that creation is correct. For whatever might be said of other aspects or elements in our natures, our consciousness, taken (...) per se or just as consciousness, is something which could not possibly have evolved out of pre-existing things or states of thing. That is because consciousness is ultimately simple and only what is composite can come to be by evolution out of pre-existing things or states of thing. (shrink)

If (1) a person's knowing a proposition P implies that P is true and if (2) facts are unidentical with true propositions then in knowing P a person does not know a fact. Unless the correspondence view of truth is abandoned, this skepticism as regards facts cannot be answered by denying (2). If facts are identical with true propositions then facts are (trivially) true. But if truth consists in a correspondence to fact then every fact, being true, corresponds to a (...) fact and the latter fact to another fact and so ad infinitum leaving the truth of any fact groundless. But the skepticism can be answered by construing the dictum that knowledge implies truth not as (1) above but as (1')» a person's knowing a fact F implies that the statement of that fact is true. On this solution of direct realism facts are substituted for propositions as the objects of knowledge and statements instead of propositions are made the bearers of 'true'. (shrink)

If a person's knowing a proposition P implies that P is true and if facts are unidentical with true propositions then in knowing P a person does not know a fact. Unless the correspondence view of truth is abandoned, this skepticism as regards facts cannot be answered by denying. If facts are identical with true propositions then facts are true. But if truth consists in a correspondence to fact then every fact, being true, corresponds to a fact and the latter (...) fact to another fact and so ad infinitum leaving the truth of any fact groundless. But the skepticism can be answered by construing the dictum that knowledge implies truth not as above but as » a person's knowing a fact F implies that the statement of that fact is true. On this solution of direct realism facts are substituted for propositions as the objects of knowledge and statements instead of propositions are made the bearers of 'true'. (shrink)

Hume's law, that is, that moral claims cannot be inferred from exclusively nonmoral claims, is widely accepted by recent and contemporary philosophers, some exceptions being John Searle and A. N. Prior. Chapter 1 distinguishes three versions of the law: the formal version ), the conceptual version ), and the epistemic version ), all of which, according to Salwén, are true. When "valid inference" means "a sentence is a logical consequence of a set of sentences K iff there is no interpretation (...) under which all the sentences of K are true and x false", then the law is, HL: "For all valid arguments, K>X, and all moral expressions Ö, if Ö occurs nonvacuously in X, then Ö appears in K". When "valid inference" means an inference "such that the truth of the premise conceptually guarantees the truth of the conclusion", and when a bridge premise is a conditional sentence whose antecedent is a nonmoral sentence and whose consequence is a categorial norm or moral sentence, then the law reads, HL: "There are no analytic bridge sentences". Thus, HL implies, as against Searle, that the bridge premise, "If Jones has promised to pay Smith five dollars, then Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars," is false. Unlike either HL or HL, HL is about nonmoral reasons for holding moral beliefs. Thus, "HL implies that, say, the acceptance of 'Jones has promised to pay Smith five dollars' is a reason to accept 'Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars' only if it is accepted that promises ought to be kept". (shrink)

Holism in metaphysics can be defended because it can solve a dilemma about error: that the object of one’s wrong judgment is either inside or outside one’s mind and that neither alternative can be the case. Among holists the American philosopher Josiah Royce provides the best account of both the dilemma and its holist answer. The latter consists in steering between the hard and fast difference of being inside and outside the mind that sparks the dilemma. Royce does this by (...) identifying a unity in the difference, which then ceases to be a stark division and becomes instead a unity-in-difference. I then show how a related dilemma is susceptible to this sort of holist solution. Yet the holist answer to these dilemmas invites all the stock objections to holism. These include the obliteration of finite selves and the distinction between such selves and their experiences. Answering these objections calls for an alternative that uses Royce’s ploy of synthesizing the extremes of being inside and being outside the mind. This sort of realism gets between the horns of the dilemmas via the real and intentional modes of forms. (shrink)

In human beings, choice and action require a cause of a different kind to link them. Otherwise a vicious regress breaks out. This is cause in the sense of end or purpose. It stands between choice and action, making a reciprocative causal triad. Yet apart from our projects, this triad obtains in nature too, and for the same reason. In reproduction, as in choice and action, means are activities that are directed to the replication of pre-existing patterns as ends. Further, (...) when agents are taken not as active but as capable of certain activities, the latter are not means as in reproduction but themselves ends. In this sense, it can be said that persons have a natural end as persons, a thesis for which two arguments are proposed. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to Thomistic philosophy through selected topics such as being, God, teleology, truth, persons and knowledge, ethics, and universals. Defending the basis of Aquinas’ natural-law ethics, Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy reveals the role of universalizability and the relation of right and good in his ethics.

Natural law in Aquinas shares the essential features of law in general: it belongs to mind and stands between end and activity. The mind here is the human mind, the end is happiness which is the natural end of persons as persons and the activity is virtuous activity. The latter is activity that accords with reason. Virtue is called for by the natural law. That is because a) virtue is the habit that inclines persons to rational activity, b) persons are (...) naturally inclined to rational activity and e) to the natural law belong all those things to which persons are naturally inclined. And so the ideas of virtue, rational activity, happiness and natural end are all of them inextricably linked in the Thomistic natural law ethics. (shrink)

Natural law in Aquinas shares the essential features of law in general: it belongs to mind and stands between end and activity. The mind here is the human mind, the end is happiness which is the natural end of persons as persons and the activity is virtuous activity. The latter is activity that accords with reason. Virtue is called for by the natural law. That is because a) virtue is the habit that inclines persons to rational activity, b) persons are (...) naturally inclined to rational activity and e) to the natural law belong all those things to which persons are naturally inclined. And so the ideas of virtue, rational activity, happiness and natural end are all of them inextricably linked in the Thomistic natural law ethics. (shrink)