In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Are There Failed Persons?John O'CallaghanIntroductionAre there failed persons? Yes. However, before explaining what a failed person is, it will be good to consider closely a very significant part of our society to get a sense of what it thinks a failed person is, since my account of what a failed person is is markedly different. It is important to think about the question of failed persons because there (...) are growing movements here and abroad aimed at killing by medical means human beings who are judged in some sense to be failed persons, human beings who do not count as persons according to a common societal notion of persons, a social-psychological notion of persons.The question for anyone who lives within this society with its notion of failed persons is whether one will take part in and support this movement toward killing human beings or avoid it, indeed whether one will push back against it. It is easy enough to fall into a trap of thinking about failed persons the way much of our society does. One's complicity in adopting the social-psychological notion of person contributes to enabling the acceptance of such killing, even if one believes one would never perform the killing act. My effort here is precisely to push back against such killing, by pushing back against the notion of persons that animates it.The killing of human beings by our society is not simply confined to abortion, as it has been legally and widely available here in the United States for almost fifty years now. Recent political discussions in the wake of the Dobbs decision have made it clear that many political leaders think such killing ought to be allowed all the way up until birth, and perhaps after. Relatively [End Page 1123] recently there was an article in a mainstream bioethics journal by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva arguing that what most people would take to be cases of infanticide should be renamed, per their title, "After-Birth Abortion."1 The article was not about the moral legitimacy of either infanticide or abortion. The moral legitimacy of those acts for various reasons was taken as a given by the authors. In the case of euthanizing infants, they noted the expanding number of arguments for it among philosophers, the desire for guidelines for doing it among members of the medical profession, and the protocols for it established in places like the Netherlands.The authors argued that in the case of newborns, including healthy newborns, killing them should not be considered infanticide or euthanasia.2 They distinguished abortion from both euthanasia and infanticide. Euthanasia involves killing a human person, where a person is understood to be a being that can experience itself as having interests that can be harmed. "We take 'person' to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her."3 Euthanasia, when justified, is justified by being in the best "interests" of the person killed. Infanticide involves euthanizing children.However, the authors claim that a newborn is not a person in the sense of "person" specified. So, the authors' term "after-birth abortion" is a terminological distinction based upon denying that a newborn is a child, children being persons. They also assume that infants are children as they understand "child." So not being a child, a newborn cannot be an infant. Not being an infant, killing it cannot be infanticide or euthanasia, again as the authors define those terms.4 Instead, killing the newborns, healthy or not, should be thought of as having the same moral weight as an abortion before birth, and thus rather than being called infanticide or euthanasia, it should be called "after-birth abortion."5Killing a newborn then is "ethically permissible" in just the same circumstances and for the same reasons as abortion is ethically permissible. Among [End Page 1124] the "ethically permissible" circumstances for killing newborns, including perfectly healthy newborns, are that the "well-being of the family is at risk" with respect to "social, psychological, economic" factors,6 but also the fact... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy after ChristJohn O'CallaghanConsider the words of Justin Martyr written in the middle of the second century after the birth of Christ and after Justin's conversion to Christianity:Philosophy is indeed one's greatest possession, and is most precious in the sight of God, to whom it alone leads us and to whom it unites us, and in truth they who have applied themselves to philosophy are holy men.1In addition to (...) the praise heaped upon the philosophers, among whom Justin had counted himself before his conversion,2 the text is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the historical reality of Christian intellectual engagement with pagan or secular philosophy. Whether that engagement proved spiritually fruitful or sterile in any particular age or any particular tradition of philosophy, Christian intellectuals have often sought out engagement with philosophy as an inherent task of the intellectual life of the Church, in order to pursue and develop the understanding of Christian revelation and the mode of life informed by it. One lasting result of the impetus represented by Justin is to be found even now in the normative requirement in Catholic education that, at a certain stage of development, anyone who receives a [End Page 49] serious Catholic education must be introduced to serious philosophical reflection on where we came from, what we are, and where we are born to go.In addition, one of the general points John Henry Newman made in The Idea of a University is that the human mind looks for unity in the diversity of intellectual disciplines it pursues. In search of this unity, it seeks a kind of primary discipline that takes into account the truths discovered throughout the other disciplines as it seeks to understand what it can of the whole of reality, not just its parts. But Newman also pointed out that, in the absence of such a unifying discipline, practitioners of each particular discipline will often claim for their particular discipline the prize of being primary—of being the discipline by which all others must be understood and judged.3Take classical and modern physics. A familiar claim of some physicists, but even more so of non-physicist physicalists, is that physics is the fundamental intellectual discipline for understanding what is real. All reality, living reality, historical reality, moral reality, indeed perhaps even literary reality, must be reduced to reality as described by the physicists or rejected as unreal or epiphenomenal, or in a kinder, gentler vein, non-reductively emergent and supervenient. Whichever position is taken, whether reduction, non-reductive emergence, or epiphenomenalism, the thought is that the real work of the really real is done by reality as described by physics, either in its actual contemporary state or, more likely, in an idealized future state always on the horizon of where physics presently is. We are really atoms spinning ceaselessly in the void, mostly empty space, the warp and woof of a four-dimensional space-time manifold, or congeries of strings in an even more bizarre thirteen-dimensional manifold, or whatever was said most recently to surpass what was said before that by the leading physicists in California or Cambridge.However, anyone who has actually practiced physics knows that, even when uttered by a physicist, these are not claims of physics, but about physics. What prompts them is the sense that there is no intellectual discipline other than contemporary physics itself that can both understand the achievements of physics and integrate them into a larger intellectual comprehension of reality as a whole. These claims about physics nicely display Newman's point about the way in which a particular discipline, in the absence of a larger more comprehensive discipline, can take on an importance for its practitioners well beyond its disciplinary limits. [End Page 50]In the case of physics, if a more comprehensive unifying discipline is not to be found, this attitude is not entirely unjustified, for Newman's point is partly Aristotelian. Aristotle had pointed out that, if one cannot show that unchangeable, and thus non-physical beings, exist, then what Aristotle called "first philosophy" would just be physics as he understood it, the science of... (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ engagement with Thomism in “Being and Being Known” is examined, specifically for his reformulation of the thesis that the mind in its mental acts is in some sense identical in form to the object known. Borrowing the notion of “isomorphism” from modern set theory, Sellars describes an identity of form between mind and world that is non-intentional in the “Realm of the Real,” while confining all questions of meaning and truth to the “Realm of the Intentional.” John (...) McDowell’s response to Sellars’ reformulation is then examined. McDowell is critical of Sellars’ “blind spot” on the normativity of truth, and argues for the embedding of the intentional in the Realm of the Real under the guise of truth. This paper notes difficulties with both authors’ discussions. Both authors are misled in their discussions of Aquinas by an overemphasis upon the “mental word” as described by Peter Geach. In addition it is proposed that Sellars’ notion of “isomorphisms” has the additional problem of adequately distinguishing various types of mental statements as neural states in the Realm of the Real. The paper concludes by arguing for a deep affinity between McDowell and Aquinas on the normativity of truth. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER I WANT TO ADDRESS the metaphysical status of concepts in Thomas Aquinas. The need to do so is raised by contemporary criticism of Aristotelian reflections upon how language “hooks up with the world.” Many contemporary philosophers, following upon the later Wittgenstein think that in the opening passages of the De interpretatione Aristotle provides a very bad “theory” of semantic relations, when he sketches how words are related to things via the mind. It is a bad “theory” inasmuch (...) as it seems to involve “mental representationalism” as a constitutive element. Amidst all their disagreements, it is fair to say that the many authors anthologized in Richard Rorty’s The Linguistic Turn come together in a common disdain for any hint of mental representationalism in philosophical discussions of the semantic of language. This is not the place to rehearse in detail all the difficulties posed for mental representationalism within contemporary philosophy, in particular because they are very familiar. Yet it would be good to characterize briefly what I have in mind. Hilary Putnam, one of the most forceful critics, and with the De interpretatione text explicitly in mind, describes the relationship between meaning and mental representationalism in this way. (shrink)

Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice provides a dramatic setting for thinking about the relationship of mercy to justice, a topic of great concern to contemporary ethical and political thought. Traditionally classified as among Shakespeare’s comedies, the play can also be analyzed as a tragedy in which Shylock is the protagonist. The tragedy is driven by the relatively weak conception of mercy in relationship to justice that informs Portia’s famous soliloquy “the quality of mercy.... ” The mercy she praises is closely related (...) to the stoic conception of mercy that Seneca urges upon Nero, a mercy that is bound within the confines of justice. Examining Aquinas’ discussion of misericordia in relation to justice and forgiveness provides a more robust conception of mercy that is closely associated with friendship, particularly the friendship Aquinas argues is owed by all human beings to all human beings. This concept of mercy can rightly be said to be a mercy beyond justice, a mercy that justice strives to attain. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ engagement with Thomism in “Being and Being Known” is examined, specifically for his reformulation of the thesis that the mind in its mental acts is in some sense identical in form to the object known. Borrowing the notion of “isomorphism” from modern set theory, Sellars describes an identity of form between mind and world that is non-intentional in the “Realm of the Real,” while confining all questions of meaning and truth to the “Realm of the Intentional.” John (...) McDowell’s response to Sellars’ reformulation is then examined. McDowell is critical of Sellars’ “blind spot” on the normativity of truth, and argues for the embedding of the intentional in the Realm of the Real under the guise of truth. This paper notes difficulties with both authors’ discussions. Both authors are misled in their discussions of Aquinas by an overemphasis upon the “mental word” as described by Peter Geach. In addition it is proposed that Sellars’ notion of “isomorphisms” has the additional problem of adequately distinguishing various types of mental statements as neural states in the Realm of the Real. The paper concludes by arguing for a deep affinity between McDowell and Aquinas on the normativity of truth. (shrink)

This article is a reply by the author to John Deely’s book review “How to Go Nowhere with Language: Remarks on John O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn” (ACPQ vol. 82, no. 2). Its main topics are: (i) Deely’s view that, for Aquinas, the concept is distinct from the act of understanding, (ii) John of St. Thomas’s use of mirror images as a metaphor for how concepts work in cognition, and (iii) the sign relation posited (...) by Aristotle that stands between words and concepts of the mind. (shrink)

This paper responds to an argument of Hilary Putnam to the effect that the plurality of modern sciences shows us that any natural kind has a plurality of essences. In the past, he has argued that no system of representations, mental or linguistic, could have an intrinsic relationship to the world. Though he has granted that the Thomistic notion of form and its application to the identity of concepts may avoid these earlier objections, he has maintained that the advance of (...) the sciences has shown us that there are too many substantial forms in any particular kind of thing to provide the unity of conceptual identity required by the Thomist’s account. Given the resemblance of Putnam’s position to the “pluralists” against whom Aquinas argued in the Summa Theologiae a consideration of Aquinas arguments is undertaken. Following this, the paper examines a particular case of recent scientific practice, in order to suggest whose position, Putnam’s or the Thomist’s, more adequately captures the practice of the natural sciences of today, and their bearing upon the metaphysical question of the nature of essence in natural kinds. The paper concludes that the Thomist position on the unity of form or essence, with qualifications made about distinct conceptual approaches to some object of investigation, and the use of analogy in sorting through these distinct approaches, is better capable of accounting for the actual goals and practices of scientific understanding as we see it practiced today than is Putnam’s transcendental nominalism and neopragmatism. (shrink)

Is it the case that God, human beings, and air all share the same capacity for cognition, differing only in the degree to which they engage in cognitive acts? Robert Pasnau has recently argued that according to St. Thomas Aquinas they do, a conclusion that for Pasnau follows straightforwardly from Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition in the first part of the Summa theologiae. Further, Pasnau holds that Aquinas’s relation to contemporary cognitive theory should be understood in light of the discussion (...) of God. This essay argues that Pasnau’s analysis is mistaken. It begins by explaining Pasnau’s position. It then considers the problems this reading introduces into Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition, as well as those it faces when addressed to air and other cognitive media. Finally, it shows the role that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy plays in understanding how “cognition” is said of human beings, how it is said of God, and how it is not said in the case of air and other cognitive media. It concludes by suggesting that the logic of analogy is Aquinas’s most crucial contribution to contemporary discussions of mind and cognition. (shrink)

Pasnau sets the philosophy in the context of ancient and modern thought, looking at some of the most difficult areas of Aquinas's thought: the relationship of soul to body, workings of sense and intellect, will and passions, and personal identity.

Some critics nowadays are calling for the development of a transracial or “color-blind” society. They claim that the current focus on multiculturalism is causing undue social conflict. In general, these critics want to promote an absolute culture that provides a universal standard for assimilation. The problem with this approach to maintaining social order is that diversity is undermined, along with key elements of democracy. What is needed, instead, is an image of society that does not require unquestioned assimilation in order (...) to insure solidarity. In this way, the democratization of culture can be promoted. (shrink)

Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice provides a dramatic setting for thinking about the relationship of mercy to justice, a topic of great concern to contemporary ethical and political thought. Traditionally classified as among Shakespeare’s comedies, the play can also be analyzed as a tragedy in which Shylock is the protagonist. The tragedy is driven by the relatively weak conception of mercy in relationship to justice that informs Portia’s famous soliloquy “the quality of mercy.... ” The mercy she praises is closely related (...) to the stoic conception of mercy that Seneca urges upon Nero, a mercy that is bound within the confines of justice. Examining Aquinas’ discussion of misericordia in relation to justice and forgiveness provides a more robust conception of mercy that is closely associated with friendship, particularly the friendship Aquinas argues is owed by all human beings to all human beings. This concept of mercy can rightly be said to be a mercy beyond justice, a mercy that justice strives to attain. (shrink)

Introduction. In the opening passages of his De interpretatione, Aristotle provides a simple summary of how he thinks language relates to the mind and the mind to reality, a sketch which has often been called his "semantic triangle." He writes.

Wilfrid Sellars’ engagement with Thomism in “Being and Being Known” is examined, specifically for his reformulation of the thesis that the mind in its mental acts is in some sense identical in form to the object known. Borrowing the notion of “isomorphism” from modern set theory, Sellars describes an identity of form between mind and world that is non-intentional in the “Realm of the Real,” while confining all questions of meaning and truth to the “Realm of the Intentional.” John (...) McDowell’s response to Sellars’ reformulation is then examined. McDowell is critical of Sellars’ “blind spot” on the normativity of truth, and argues for the embedding of the intentional in the Realm of the Real under the guise of truth. This paper notes difficulties with both authors’ discussions. Both authors are misled in their discussions of Aquinas by an overemphasis upon the “mental word” as described by Peter Geach. In addition it is proposed that Sellars’ notion of “isomorphisms” has the additional problem of adequately distinguishing various types of mental statements as neural states in the Realm of the Real. The paper concludes by arguing for a deep affinity between McDowell and Aquinas on the normativity of truth. (shrink)

In “Verbum Mentis: Theological or Philosophical Doctrine?” (Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 74, 2000), I argued against a common interpretation of Aquinas’s discussion of the verbum mentis. The common interpretation holds that the verbum mentis constitutes an essential part of Aquinas’s philosophical psychology. I argued, on the contrary, that it is no part of Aquinas’s philosophical psychology, but is a properly theological discussion grounded in the practice of scriptural metaphor, exemplified by such metaphors as “Christ is a (...) rock.” James Doig challenges my alternate interpretation. His argument has three parts. He insists, first, that the discussion of the verbum mentis was a philosophical discussion in Aquinas’s predecessors, and that Aquinas never rejected this tradition; second, that it appears as a philosophical discussion in Aquinas’s commentary on the Gospel of John; third, that in the Summa theologiae, while there is no philosophical reason for Aquinas to discuss the verbum mentis in the context of the essence, powers, and operations of the soul (Ia, qq. 75–89), it is nevertheless a philosophical discussion in the examination of thedivine Trinity (Ia, qq. 27–43) Here I respond to and argue against all three legs of Doig’s counterargument. (shrink)

Is it the case that God, human beings, and air all share the same capacity for cognition, differing only in the degree to which they engage in cognitive acts? Robert Pasnau has recently argued that according to St. Thomas Aquinas they do, a conclusion that for Pasnau follows straightforwardly from Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition in the first part of the Summa theologiae. Further, Pasnau holds that Aquinas’s relation to contemporary cognitive theory should be understood in light of the discussion (...) of God. This essay argues that Pasnau’s analysis is mistaken. It begins by explaining Pasnau’s position. It then considers the problems this reading introduces into Aquinas’s discussion of God’s cognition, as well as those it faces when addressed to air and other cognitive media. Finally, it shows the role that Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy plays in understanding how “cognition” is said of human beings, how it is said of God, and how it is not said in the case of air and other cognitive media. It concludes by suggesting that the logic of analogy is Aquinas’s most crucial contribution to contemporary discussions of mind and cognition. (shrink)

This work consists of two lecture series and two appendices broadly critical of analytic philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics. Despite the diversity of pieces, it is a good book and enjoyable to read. The overarching theme is the inseparable interweaving of the antinomies of metaphysical and epistemological realism and antirealism bequeathed to contemporary philosophy by early modern philosophy and the theory of ideas, antinomies Putnam would avoid by rejecting the underlying framework.

We propose a notion of a sub-model for each agent at each state in the Heifetz et al. model of interactive unawareness. Presuming that each agent is fully cognizant of his sub-model causes no difficulty and fully describes his knowledge and his beliefs about the knowledge and awareness of others. We use sub-models to motivate the HMS conditions on possibility correspondences.

While many 20th-century fads in philosophy and theology have come and gone, McInerny's faith in Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly prophetic. His defenses of natural theology and law helped to create dialogue between theists and non-theists, and to provide a philosophical basis for Catholic theology.

Jacques Maritain tells us that, apart from St. Thomas himself, his “principal teacher” in Thomism was John Poinsot. Poinsot, like Maritain and Thomas, expressly teaches that the basis of “Thomist realism” lies in the distinction between sentire, which makes no use of concepts, and phantasiari and intelligere, which together depend essentially on concepts. O’Callaghan makes no discussion of this point, resting his notion of realism rather on the widespread quo/quod fallacy, that is, the misinterpretation of concepts as the (...) id quo of knowing. Poinsot demonstrates that this view conflates the distinct notions of species expressae and species impressae, demonstrating further that concepts as such cannot provide the cognitive basis of realism. O’Callaghan in effect suppresses the distinction betweenobjects and things in his effort to achieve the impossible. In this review, I show that it is a question of semantics vs. semiotics over which O’Callaghan stumblesin misrepresenting “Thomist realism.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH IN LUMEN GENTIUM HE NOTION OF the Church as a smner, not often spoken of in Catholic theology of other times, has become quite common in recent years.1 Among the questions of a pastoral and theological nature that have given rise to it, the following may be noted: a) The ecumenical question. Many would wish the Church as such to accuse herself of sin, (...) as a means towards reconciliation. b) The idea borrowed from traditional Protestant theology of a certain compatibility between sin and holiness,2 the simul sanctus et pecca.tor of Luther. c) The notion of evil as a mere deficiency properly belonging to a given stage of development of the Cosmos; such is t:he understanding of Teilhard de Chardin.3 1 The mark of holiness has been applied to the Church more than any of the other three, from the very beginning of Christian times; Baptismal creeds are a clear witness to this. 2 Cf. n. 66 on Kiing. 3 "What is the inevitable complement of anything which results from such a process (an evolutive one) but having to pay the price of some losses? Lack of harmony and physical decomposition in the Pre-Vivant, suffering in the Vivant, sin in the dominion of Freedom..." (Comment je crois) ; "We must say that God, in spite of his power, cannot unite any creature to himself without necessarily entering into battle with Evil, because Evil appears inevitably with the first atom of being which creation 'releases' into existence. Creation and sinlessness are terms as much at loggerheads with divine Power and Wisdom as creature with unicity" (Notes sur les modes de l'ac-tion divine dans l'Universe-yr. 1920). Undoubtedly, sin in its effects is a lack of what man (and creation dependent on him) should have, but the point that Teilhard misses is that the 'deficiency' due to sin (unlike other imperfections found in creation) is due to the responsible action of human beings, and has no inevitability about it. 673 674 PAUL o'cALLAGHAN d) An increased awareness of the social dimension of sm. Undoubtedly sin has numerous (though divisive) social efects.4 But it would be incorrect to affirm that sin is an entirely social phenomenon.5 An application of such a notion to the Church would be an easy next stage. e) A certain undoing of the constrast between the ' Kingdom of God' and the 'world ',6 to the detriment, let it be said, both of the eternity and definitiveness of the former, and the progressive sanctification of the latter. The Church then, not belonging so intimately to the All-Holy, may be more easily looked upon as a sinner. f) Another factor has been the positive humanizing em4 In the Apostolic Exhortation Reeonciliatio et Paenitentia (English translation ; London: CTS, 1984) where Pope John Paul II ga.thers together the findings of the 1983 Synod of Bishops, many acceptable ways of understanding ' social sin' are explained: as mystically ' dragging down ' the whole world; in the sense that it goes in the detriment of our neighbour; in the relationships between various human communities (n.16: p. 51-54). 5 For example, the following words of G. Gutierrez: "No se trata, en la perspectiva liberadora, de! pecado como realidad individual, privada e intimista, afirmada justo lo necesario para necesitar una redenci6n 'espiritual ', que no cuestiona el orclen en que vivimos. Se trata del pecado como un hecho social, hist6rico... El pecatlo se da en estructures opresoras en la explotaci6n del hombre por el hombre, en la dominaci6n y esclavitud de los pueblos, razas y clases sociales. El pecado surge, entonces, como la alienaci6n fundamental, como la rniz de una situaci6n de injusticia y explotaci6n" Teofogia de la liberaci6n (Salamana: Sigueme, 1972), p. 236-237. And in a more recent work of his: " pecar es optar por la opresi6n y contra la liberaci6n " La fuerza hist6rioa de los pobres, (Lima, 1979) p. 19. As J. M. IbaiiezLanglois points out, this statement would be fine if it were to say 'to opt for oppression and against liberation is sinful', that is one more among many possible sins: Teologia de la liberacion... (shrink)

Thomas A. Sebeok (†2001) considered Charles Peirce as “our lodestar” in the contemporary semiotic development, and what he called “the Dominican tradition” (the Thomistic works of Aquinas, Poinsot, and Maritain in particular) as ‘a vein of pure gold’ yet to be mined in the contemporary semiotic development. By contrast, many contemporary authors look to what is called “Analytic philosophy” (as if there were such a thing as “non-analytic philosophy”) for their interpretation both of Peirce and of Sebeok’s “Dominican tradition”. Tzvetan (...) Todorov, however, has pointed out that semiotics as the doctrine of signs in fact compromises the very foundation upon which the ‘founding fathers’ of “Analytic philosophy” relied in their linguistic reduction of philosophical analysis. Using the works of two contemporary authors, one from the Peircean side (Thomas Short) and one claiming to represent Thomistic thought (John O’Callaghan), this review essay explores the distortive consequences for semiotics that result from adopting the standpoint of Analytic philosophy when treating matters of semiosis. Hence the sub-title “Semiotics or Semantics: What Difference Does It Make [for the doctrine of signs]?”. (shrink)

Upon first hearing sinewaves, all that can be discerned are beeps and whistles. But after hearing the original speech, the beeps and whistles sound like speech. The difference between these two episodes undoubtedly involves an alteration in phenomenal character. O’Callaghan (2011) argues that this alteration is non-sensory, but he leaves open the possibility of attributing it to some other source, e.g. cognition. I discuss whether the alteration in phenomenal character involved in sinewave speech provides evidence for cognitive phenomenology. I (...) defend both the existence of cognitive phenomenology and the phenomenal contrast method, as each concerns the case presented here. (shrink)