Economics was invented to deal with material scarcityScarcity, and is therefore biased towards increasing materially production. Many of the world’s current problems, however, are caused by excessive use of the resources of the natural world, often driven by an excessive desireDesire to accumulate the moneyMoney that stands proxy for them. In order to respond to these, then, we need to return the concept of ‘enoughEnough’ to the centre of moral and social, and therefore political and economic, thinking. ‘Enough’ for an (...) individual turns out to be concretely contextual and intrinsically relational. At the same time, it has objective boundaries, set not least by ecological limits combined with justice, both local and global. Therefore we need both good judgement and healthy societies to be truly satisfied, as individuals, with enoughEnough. One of the factors that exacerbates our weakness for excessExcess is the monetarisation of goodsGoods. Economists, I suggest, might need to be attentive to the importance, the specific complexities, and the risks of quantifying ‘enoughEnough’. (shrink)

Bernard of Clairvaux observed that some goals can corrupt the activity of learning. Bernard’s claim is not only correct and important, but can be applied more widely to purposive activity in general. The exploration of his claim makes possible a consideration of the question, ‘How might different motivations affect, and indeed corrupt, the way in which we teach and learn?’ Although, pace Bernard, learning for learning’s sake does not corrupt the activity of learning, it may, however, as Aquinas’s account of (...) curiositas is used to show, corrupt the character of the scholar. In order to protect scholarship against such corruption we need to be wary in particular of the temptation to excessive specialisation. Finally, the question is raised of what it might mean to ‘refer’ or ‘order’ study to God, and in particular in what way one might characterise the relation between attending to study and attending to God. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1103, Page 149-151, January 2022.

St Augustine himself recognised in Retractationes that De Mendacio is a difficult text to understand, because its argument is both complex and dialectical. Understanding the treatise has been further complicated by St Thomas Aquinas’ reading of it in the light of Aristotle, and under the influence of a possibly flawed textual tradition. This article clarifies Augustine’s well known eight categories of lies to resituate them in the social experience of Augustine and his contemporaries. It shows that Augustine’s argument and exegesis (...) are strikingly exploratory and undogmatic. His hard-won conclusion is driven by a demanding understanding of sanctity. A synopsis of the argument of De Mendacio is appended. (shrink)

This paper explores Augustine’s use of the twin images of Christ the physician and sin as sickness, especially in his sermons and Confessions. It shows how distinctive features of this image enable Augustine to illuminate a scriptural moral theology that is egalitarian and developmental. It is founded upon repentance, humility and a powerful awareness of dependence upon God’s grace, and demands communal responsibility for morality. Augustine’s moral theory fully integrates his personal and pastoral experience; the relevant similarities between his own (...) society and ours suggest that his theory, in its broad outlines, has not lost its validity. (shrink)

This modest volume provides an abridgement of the City of God and a small selection of other passages relating to political affairs, broadly conceived. It has a twenty-page introduction by Ernest L. Fortin; and there are brief introductions to specific sections. The bulk is taken up with the City of God. By including chapters from each book, the editors avoid the danger of distorting the theological shape of the work by over-concentrating on the overtly political passages of book 19 in (...) particular. That is important. This very comprehensiveness, however, leads one to ask whether it would not be better to let students loose on the whole text; for any selection will entail some significant omissions. (shrink)

Scotland is usually portrayed as being a country that had weak and terrible queens, like Margaret Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots. Saint Margaret is the only queen who is constantly portrayed positively. However, that is not because of her actions as queen consort, but because she was a devote Christian. Scotland is also portrayed for not producing well known or strong female rulers. This essay will examine two contemporary female rulers from the mid-fifteenth century, one from Scotland, (...) Eleanor of Scotland, and one imported to Scotland, Mary of Gueldres. Using these case studies it will be demonstrated that Scotland did produce strong female rulers along with acquiring them. (shrink)

Thomas Williams Note: This is a preprint of my introduction to the forthcoming translation by Margaret Atkins of Thomas Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on the Virtues (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy). The basic procedure was simple. The topic would be announced in advance so that everyone could prepare an arsenal of clever arguments. When the faculty and students had gathered, the professor would offer a brief introduction and state his thesis. All morning long an appointed graduate student (...) would take objections from the audience and defend the professor’s thesis against those objections. (And if the graduate student began to flounder, the professor was allowed to help him out.) A secretary would take shorthand notes. The next day the group would reassemble. This time it would be the professor’s job to summarise the arguments on both sides and give his own response to the question at issue. The whole thing would be written up, either in a rough-and-tumble version deriving from the secretary’s notes or in a more carefully crafted and edited version prepared by the professor himself. Records of such academic exercises have come down to us under the title ‘disputed questions’. (shrink)

Birds, beasts, and creeping things swarm throughout the Bible's pages. Despite their prevalence, most biblical scholars have viewed them merely as metaphors, passive objects, or background embellishment to the human experience. This collection seeks to move beyond this traditional view of biblical animals by engaging the growing interdisciplinary field of animal studies. Contributors Peter Joshua Atkins, Jared Beverly, William P. Brown, Margaret Cohen, Jacob R. Evers, Michael J. Gilmour, William "Chip" Gruen, Dong Hyeon Jeong, Brian Fiu Kolia, Anne (...) Létourneau, Robert R. MacKay, Suzanna R. Millar, Timothy J. Sandoval, Robert Paul Seesengood, Ken Stone, Brian James Tipton, Arthur W. Walker-Jones, and Jaime L. Waters showcase the breadth and depth of inquiry that animal studies can foster in biblical studies as well as what animal studies can gain from a more rigorous engagement with biblical texts. Together the essays offer an animal hermeneutic that supports the flourishing of all creatures. (shrink)

This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...) and the well-being of our social groups. These interests generate obligations against others to “do their homework” before closing inquiry. This alternate account makes better sense of puzzles that accounts of doxastic wronging fall prey to. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that epistemic rationality sometimes comes into conflict with our relationships. Although Sarah Stroud and Simon Keller argue that friendships sometimes require bad epistemic agency, their proposals do not go far enough. I argue here for a more radical claim—romantic love sometimes requires we form beliefs that are false. Lovers stand in a special position with one another; they owe things to one another that they do not owe to others. Such demands hold for beliefs as well. (...) Two facets of love ground what I call the false belief requirement , or the demand to form false beliefs when it is for the good of the beloved: the demand to love for the right reasons and the demand to refrain from doxastic wronging. Since truth is indispensable to epistemic rationality, the requirement to believe falsely, consequently, undermines truth norms. I demonstrate that, when the false belief requirement obtains, there is an irreconcilable conflict between love and truth norms of epistemic rationality: we must forsake one, at least at the time, for the other. (shrink)

This is an exploration of some problems of nonexistence, with special attention paid to Nathan Salmón’s account of merely possible and impossible objects (or entities or things). According to this account, we can refer to such objects and attribute properties to them. The terms ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ should be understood in the familiar metaphysical sense, so that a merely possible object is one that does not exist at the actual world but exists at some metaphysically possible world (it could exist (...) even though it does not) and an impossible object is one that does not exist at any metaphysically possible world (it could not exist at all). Other nonexistents, such as objects that once existed at the actual world but no longer do, will also be discussed, but mainly by way of comparison to merely possible and impossible objects. Salmón subscribes to both the direct reference theory of names and the Millian theory of names. Section I is a preliminary discussion of these theories, contrasting them with the formerly orthodox views of Frege and Russell. Section II presents Salmón’s account of merely possible and impossible objects. Sections III and IV are an evaluation and defense of a modified version of the account. Among other things, it is argued that Salmón’s account does not slip into any problematic form of Meinongianism. However, section V questions why Salmón’s account of impossible objects would not extend to Meinong’s notorious round square. (shrink)

Although the index is one of the best known features of Peirce's theory of signs there is little appreciation of Peirce's theory of the index amongst contemporary philosophers of language. Amongst Peirce scholars, the value placed on Peirce's account is greater, but is largely based on Thomas Goudge's paper, "Peirce's Index" (Goudge, 1965). Despite marking a crucial milestone in our comprehension of Peirce's theory, our understanding of indices and indexical reference has grown markedly over the last forty years. Time has (...) now come, then, to develop the work that Goudge began and to provide a full analysis of Peirce's account that makes its value to the philosophy of language clear. I undertake this enterprise here. (shrink)

Anthony Brueckner and Jon Altschul suggest a version of skepticism according to which the skeptic posits a distinct skeptical hypothesis for each external world proposition that a person claims to know. In a recent issue of this journal, Eric Yang argues against this piecemeal approach. In this note, I show that Yang’s argument against piecemeal skepticism is fallacious.

Peirce's Sign Theory, or Semiotic, is an account of signification, representation, reference and meaning. Although sign theories have a long history, Peirce's accounts are distinctive and innovative for their breadth and complexity, and for capturing the importance of interpretation to signification. For Peirce, developing a thoroughgoing theory of signs was a central philosophical and intellectual preoccupation. The importance of semiotic for Peirce is wide ranging. As he himself said, “[…] it has never been in my power to study anything,—mathematics, ethics, (...) metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semiotic”. (SS 1977, 85–6). Peirce also treated sign theory as central to his work on logic, as the medium for inquiry and the process of scientific discovery, and even as one possible means for 'proving' his pragmatism. Its importance in Peirce's philosophy, then, cannot be underestimated. -/- Across the course of his intellectual life, Peirce continually returned to and developed his ideas about signs and semiotic and there are three broadly delineable accounts: a concise Early Account from the 1860s; a complete and relatively neat Interim Account developed through the 1880s and 1890s and presented in 1903; and his speculative, rambling, and incomplete Final Account developed between 1906 and 1910. The following entry examines these three accounts, and traces the changes that led Peirce to develop earlier accounts and generate new, more complex, sign theories. However, despite these changes, Peirce's ideas on the basic structure of signs and signification remain largely uniform throughout his developments. Consequently, it is useful to begin with an account of the basic structure of signs according to Peirce. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce is generally regarded as the founder of pragmatism, and one of the greatest ever American philosophers. Peirce is also widely known for his work on truth, his foundational work in mathematical logic, and an influential theory of signs, or semiotics. Albert Atkin introduces the full spectrum of Peirce’s thought for those coming to his work for the first time. The book begins with an overview of Peirce’s life and work, considering his early and long-standing interest in logic (...) and science, and highlighting important views on the structure of philosophical thought. Atkin then explains Peirce’s accounts of pragmatism and truth examining important later developments to these theories. He then introduces Peirce’s full accounts of semiotics, examines his foundational work on formal and graphical logic, and introduces Peirce’s account of metaphysics, the least understood aspect of his philosophy. The final chapter considers Peirce’s legacy and influence on the thought of philosophers such as John Dewey and Richard Rorty, as well as highlighting areas where Peirce’s ideas could still provide important insights for contemporary philosophers. Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading and a glossary, this invaluable introduction and guide to Peirce’s philosophy is essential reading for those new to his work. (shrink)

In this paper I examine parallels between C.S. Peirce's most mature account of signs and contemporary philosophy of language. I do this by first introducing a summary of Peirce's final account of Signs. I then use that account of signs to reconstruct Peircian answers to two puzzles of reference: The Problem of Cognitive Significance, or Frege's Puzzle; and The Same-Saying Phenomenon for Indexicals. Finally, a comparison of these Peircian answers with both Fregean and Direct Referentialist approaches to the puzzles highlights (...) interesting parallels and important differences between Peirce's final account of signs, and the concepts used in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

The distinction between essential versus accidental properties has been characterized in various ways, but it is currently most commonly understood in modal terms: an essential property of an object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it happens to have but that it could lack. Let’s call this the basic modal characterization, where a modal characterization of a notion is one that explains the notion in terms of necessity/possibility. In the (...) characterization just given of the distinction between essential and accidental properties, the use of the word “must” reflects the fact that necessity is invoked, while the use of the word “could” reflects that possibility is invoked. The notions of necessity and possibility are interdefinable: to say that something is necessary is to say that its negation is not possible; to say that something is possible is to say that its negation is not necessary; to say that an object must have a certain property is to say that it could not lack it; and to say that an object could have a certain property is to say that it is not the case that it must lack it. (shrink)

Mineral waters were a delicate and unstable product whose value as a remedy increased in early modern France. If it was once the prised luxury of the nobility travelling to the spa, the eighteenth century slowly watched it turned into a commodity. The waters became widely available in bottles and were sold in bureaus of distribution. Despite the logistical challenges of selecting and carrying the waters to their new urban public, many different springs made their way into most of France’s (...) cities. This took place under the watch and regulation of a uniquely dedicated institution, the Société de Médecine. This Société eventually settled its authority over the management of mineral waters, thanks to the backing of state power, the influence of the Academy and the newly recognized authority of chemists as analysts of waters. The purpose of this paper is to bring to light this overlooked institution and its essential role in the administration of mineral waters. Though it never eradicated fraud or succeeded in creating a full scientific and economic monopoly, it greatly broadened the budding trade of bottled water in France and gave a powerful incentive for chemists to better their mastering of the particularly challenging analysis of water. (shrink)

This essay will address a general philosophical concern about autonomy, namely, that a conception of autonomy focused on freedom of the will alone is inadequate, once we consider the effects of oppressive forms of socialization on individuals’ formation of choices. In response to this problem, I will present a brief overview of Diana Meyers’s account of autonomy as relational and practical. On this view, autonomy consists in a set of socially acquired practical competencies in self-discovery, self-definition, self-knowledge, and self-direction. This (...) account provides a distinction between choices that express unreflectively internalized social norms and those that are the result of a critical ‘self-reading’. I conclude that this practical conception of autonomy makes much higher demands upon nurses (and patients) than has previously been thought. In fact, if nurses are to be expected to genuinely promote autonomy, they are going to need specific training in counselling-type communication skills. (shrink)

Retributive theories of punishment argue that punishing a criminal for a crime she committed is sufficient reason for a justified and morally permissible punishment. But what about when the state gets lucky in its decision to punish? I argue that retributive theories of punishment are subject to “Gettier” style cases from epistemology. Such cases demonstrate that the state needs more than to just get lucky, and as these retributive theories of punishment stand, there is no anti-luck condition. I’ll argue that (...) Gettier-style cases demonstrate an impermissible instance of punishment, even though they meet the conditions of retributive theories of punishment. Retributive theories are, therefore, too weak. The safety condition from epistemology provides the anti-luck condition needed for permissible punishment. I argue that two forms of retributivism, rights-forfeiture and what I call standard retributivism, are both subject to Gettier-style cases. Unlike the literature on standards of proof, this paper argues that safety is a condition on punishment itself, i.e., in all nearby possible worlds, the accuser must correctly accuse the convicted for the crime they actually committed. (shrink)