Jeffrey J. Maciejewski’s Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric reveals why human nature is dependent on an internally constituted form of persuasive discourse to bring about human action. This book puts forth that use of rhetorical discourse is natural to the human person and makes possible the fullest apprehension of human goods.

To advance the philosophical debate of advertising's role in society, in this article I situate the natural tendencies of individuals that manifest themselves in economic relationships within the broader context of natural-law theory. I propose that a natural tendency to exchange goods underscores the classical liberal economic model. As a result, individuals have a natural inclination toward the use of persuasive rhetoric. In addition, as animale symbolicum, individuals have a natural tendency toward symbol use and creation, which in turn affects (...) the production and consumption of persuasive discourse. In light of these particular natural inclinations, I suggest that natural law can justify the institution of advertising. (shrink)

This article places the concept of "right to know," which is normally associated with law, in a moral framework. It outlines multiple meanings of the concept, emphasizing the institutional nature of "right to know." Then the article imbeds this understanding in moral thinking, including a discussion of the moral elements of rights, and applies that understanding in specific journalistic situations.

. Although the pages of Journal of Business Ethics have hosted an ongoing dialogue on the ethics of rhetoric and persuasion, the debates have been unable to account for the underlying morality of the human propensity to engage in rhetorical discourse as a part of living in society. In this paper, I offer natural-law ethical theory as a moral paradigm in which to examine rhetoric. In this context, I assert that rhetoric services reason, which in turn services our dispositions or (...) inclinations that are one ideological foundation of natural-law theory. As rhetoric affects the apprehension of these dispositions it subsumes a related morality in which rhetorical endeavors can be seen as “natural”. So endowed, I believe that this conception of rhetoric offers a number of philosophical and practical implications, one of which is a new way to assess the morality of commercial manifestations of rhetoric such as spin and the use of puffery in advertising. (shrink)

A few months ago, I was busy scrolling through one of my favorite automotive Web sites, reading about a concept carintroduced at an international auto show, when a hyperlink embedded in the text of...

Observers, including the Catholic Church, have consistently demonstrated a keen ability to identify instances of rhetoric, such as advertising, that are distasteful or offensive. Although they have not necessarily characterized such endeavors as immoral, I submit that a developing notion of “natural rhetoric” may permit such criticism by contextualizing rhetoric as natural, unnatural or even perverse. Following this approach I assert that natural rhetoric, in service to reason, makes possible the apprehension of the basic good of societas. Consequently, rhetoric of (...) the unnatural variety undermines this teleological purpose; when conceived as a perversion it might not only undermine the mission of natural rhetoric, but it might do so in such a way that it harms one or more individuals. After articulating and testing this exploratory thesis with two exemplars, I offer implications for Thomistic natural law and for those who formulate the Catholic Church’s positions on social communications. (shrink)

Although rhetoric might be thought of as nothing more than an archaic art of manipulation, its ability to bring about action—particularly as the intellect and will engage in acts of persuasion amid the operations of the practical intellect—is a possibility that has gone largely unnoticed among philosophers of human nature. In this paper I explore the possibility that natural rhetoric, much as it serves the practical intellect in precipitating action, serves the speculative intellect as it stimulates acts of cognizing and (...) understanding, thus leading to the acquisition of knowledge. (shrink)

Despite traditional viewpoints that see rhetoric as nothing more than a techné or bios, rhetoric may be viewed as being capable of instantiating basic human goods. This paper proposes that rhetoric motivates our capacities for action and brings the processes involved in action – including the bearing of practical reason on them – into accord with virtue, enabling us to exercise practical wisdom in and through prudential judgments so that when these judgments have a direct bearing on others we may (...) say that they are just. (shrink)

The idea that the operations of the mind are carried out discursively, even linguistically, has won wide acceptance among contemporary Thomists. What has not been explored, however, is the role of persuasion in motivating the actions of the intellect and will. This paper explores the possibility that some form of persuasive discourse is employed by the mind to move the intellect and will to precipitate action. Drawing on essentialism as a foundational ontology, I offer a prefatory theory of persuasive reasoning (...) –‘natural rhetoric’– to explain how it is that we persuade ourselves (and others) to do things, including things that are defective. (shrink)

This book is both suitable for logically and algebraically minded graduate and advanced graduate students of mathematics, computer science and philosophy, and ...

Peter Millican and Branden Thornhill-Miller have recently argued that contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with the host of defeaters based on empirical research concerning alleged sources of evidence for ‘perceived supernatural agency’, render all ‘first-order’, that is actual, religious traditions positively irrational, and a source of discord on a global scale. However, since the authors recognise that the ‘secularisation thesis’ appears to be incorrect, and that empirical research provides evidence that religious belief also has beneficial individual and (...) social effects, they put forward a hypothesis of a ‘second-order religious belief ’, with Universalist overtones and thus free of intergroup conflict, and free of irrationality, since supported (solely) by the Fine-Tuning Argument. While granting most of their arguments based on empirical research and embracing the new paradigm of the atheism/religion debate implicit in their paper, I contend that Millican’s and Thornhill-Miller’s proposal is unlikely to appeal to religious believers, because it misconstrues the nature and grounds of religious belief. I suggest that their hypothesis may be refined by taking into account a view of axiologically grounded religious belief that I refer to as ‘agatheism’, since it identifies God or the Ultimate Reality with the ultimate good (to agathon). (shrink)

The class Matr(C) of all matrices for a prepositional logic (, C) is investigated. The paper contains general results with no special reference to particular logics. The main theorem (Th. (5.1)) which gives the algebraic characterization of the class Matr(C) states the following. Assume C to be the consequence operation on a prepositional language induced by a class K of matrices. Let m be a regular cardinal not less than the cardinality of C. Then Matr (C) is the least class (...) of matrices containing K and closed under m-reduced products, submatrices, matrix homomorphisms, and matrix homomorphic counter-images. (shrink)

The notion of local deduction theorem (which generalizes on the known instances of indeterminate deduction theorems, e.g. for the infinitely-valued ukasiewicz logic C ) is defined. It is then shown that a given finitary non-pathological logic C admits the local deduction theorem iff the class Matr(C) of all matrices validating C has the C-filter extension property (Theorem II.1).

In the paper we study the class of weakly algebraizable logics, characterized by the monotonicity and injectivity of the Leibniz operator on the theories of the logic. This class forms a new level in the non-linear hierarchy of protoalgebraic logics.

The main result of the present paper — Theorem 3 — establishes the equivalence of the interpolation and amalgamation properties for a large family of logics and their associated classes of matrices.

We propose a new schema for the deduction theorem and prove that the deductive system S of a prepositional logic L fulfills the proposed schema if and only if there exists a finite set A(p, q) of propositional formulae involving only prepositional letters p and q such that A(p, p) L and p, A(p, q) s q.

The paper is conceived as a first study on the Suszko operator. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the existence of close relations holding between the properties of the Suszko operator and the structural properties of the model class for various sentential logics. The emphasis is put on generality both of the results and methods of tackling the problems that arise in the theory of this operator. The attempt is made here to develop the theory for non-protoalgebraic logics.

We are facing a crisis of trust in expertise today. Fewer and fewer people trust experts, and more and more politicians openly ignore expert consensus. 'Democracy in the Post-Truth Era' asks what might happen to democracy if we reject the fundamental liberal assumption that people are capable of making informed choices. The book explores the potential impact on society if people, including politicians, never appreciate the relevance of expert opinions. What if people cannot choose between supporters and opponents of key (...) issues such as the causes of climate change, effectiveness of vaccines and ways of combating economic and social crises? Applying social epistemology to these questions, the book considers whether democracy can be defended in the post-truth era. (shrink)

The present paper is thought as a formal study of distributive closure systems which arise in the domain of sentential logics. Special stress is laid on the notion of a C-filter, playing the role analogous to that of a congruence in universal algebra. A sentential logic C is called filter distributive if the lattice of C-filters in every algebra similar to the language of C is distributive. Theorem IV.2 in Section IV gives a method of axiomatization of those filter distributive (...) logics for which the class Matr (C) prime of C-prime matrices (models) is axiomatizable. In Section V, the attention is focused on axiomatic strengthenings of filter distributive logics. The theorems placed there may be regarded, to some extent, as the matrix counterparts of Baker's well-known theorem from universal algebra [9, § 62, Theorem 2]. (shrink)

With each sentential logic C, identified with a structural consequence operation in a sentential language, the class Matr * (C) of factorial matrices which validate C is associated. The paper, which is a continuation of [2], concerns the connection between the purely syntactic property imposed on C, referred to as Maehara Interpolation Property (MIP), and three diagrammatic properties of the class Matr* (C): the Amalgamation Property (AP), the (deductive) Filter Extension Property (FEP) and Injections Transferable (IT). The main theorem of (...) the paper (Theorem 2.2) is analogous to the Wroski's result for equational classes of algebras [13]. It reads that for a large class of logics the conjunction of (AP) and (FEP) is equivalent to (IT) and that the latter property is equivalent to (MIP). (shrink)

We examine the notion of primitive satisfaction in logical matrices. Theorem II. 1, being the matrix counterpart of Baker's well-known result for congruently distributive varieties of algebras (cf [1], Thm. 1.5), links the notions of primitive and standard satisfaction. As a corollary we give the matrix version of Jónsson's Lemma, proved earlier in [4]. Then we investigate propositional logics with disjunction. The main result, Theorem III. 2, states a necessary and sufficient condition for such logics to be finitely based.

In 1973, Sette presented a calculus, called P1, which is recognized as one of the most remarkable paraconsistent systems. The aim of this paper is to propose a new axiomatization of P1. The axiom schemata are chosen to show that P1 behaves in a paraconsistent way only at the atomic level, i.e. the rule: α, ~α / β holds in P1 only if α is not a propositional variable.

By a sentential logic we understand a pair, where S is a sentential language, i.e. an absolutely free algebra freely generated by an infinite set p, q, r,... of sentential variables and endowed with countably many finitary connectives §1, §2,... and C is a consequence operation on S, the underlying set of S, satisfying the condition of structurality: eC ⊆ C, for every endomorphism e of S and for every X ⊆ S. If no confusion is likely we shall identify (...) a logic with its consequence operation C. A logic C is standard if C = [ {C : Y ⊆ X & Y is finite}, for all X ⊆ S. (shrink)