Psychologists and philosophers have argued that the capacity for perseverance or “grit” depends both on willpower and on a kind of epistemic resilience. But can a form of hopefulness in one’s future success also constitute a source of grit? I argue that substantial practical hopefulness, as a hope to bring about a desired outcome through exercises of one’s agency, can serve as a distinctive ground for the capacity for perseverance. Gritty agents’ “practical hope” centrally involves an attention-fuelled, risk-inclined weighting of (...) two competing concerns over action: when facing the decision of whether to persevere, hopeful gritty agents prioritize the aim of choosing a course of action which might go very well over that of choosing a course of action which is very likely to go fairly well. By relying on the notion of a “risk-inclined attentional pattern” as a dimension of gritty agents’ practical hope, we can explain that form of hope’s contribution to their motivation and practical rationality, especially on a risk-weighted expected utility framework. The upshot is a more pluralistic view of the sources of grit. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that friendship can constitutively require epistemic irrationality against a recent, forceful challenge, raised by proponents of moral and pragmatic encroachment. Defenders of the “encroachment strategy” argue that exemplary friends who are especially slow to believe that their friends have acted wrongly are simply sensitive to the high prudential or moral costs of falsely believing in their friends’ guilt. Drawing on psychological work on epistemic motivation (and in particular on the notion of “need for closure”), I propose (...) a different picture of what friendship requires in the doxastic realm. I argue that contrary to what the encroachment strategy suggests, exemplary friends’ belief formation ought not be guided by a concern with accuracy or error avoidance, but instead by a need to avoid a “specific closure” – namely, a need to avoid concluding in their friends’ guilt. I propose that exemplary friendship often generates a defeasible, doxastic obligation to exemplify such a need, despite its inherent corrupting effects on exemplary friends’ epistemic faculties. (shrink)

Hope is often seen as at once valuable and dangerous: it can fuel our motivation in the face of challenges, but can also distract us from reality and lead us to irrationality. How can we learn to “hope well,” and what does “hoping well” involve? Contemporary philosophers disagree on such normative questions about hope and also on how to define hope as a mental state. This article explores recent philosophical debates surrounding the concept of hope and the norms governing hope. (...) It also underlies hope's significance for the philosophy of emotion and the ethics of interpersonal relations. (shrink)

The theory of social-property relations, or political Marxism, has argued that in contradistinction with pre-capitalist forms of exploitation, capitalism is characterised by the separation of the economic and the political, which makes surplus appropriation under this system uniquely driven by economic coercion. In spite of political Marxism’s various strengths, this article argues that the paradigm puts forward an ahistorical and sanitised conception of capitalism typical of bourgeois economics, which is an outcome of its formal-abstractionist approach to the concept of the (...) mode of production and the separation between theory and history that it operates. A more satisfactory solution to political Marxism’s inability to make sense of past and present forms of coercion and violence under capitalism can be found in Jairus Banaji’s emphasis on Marx’s historical – rather than formal – conception of the mode of production. (shrink)

Pursuing difficult long-term goals typically involves encountering substantial evidence of possible future failure. If decisions to pursue such goals are serious only if one believes that one will act as one has decided, then some of our lives’ most important decisions seem to require belief against the evidence. This is the puzzle of difficult action, to which I offer a solution. I argue that serious decisions to φ do not have to give rise to a belief that one will φ, (...) but can instead be accompanied by a hope to φ. Hope can motivate and rationalize the various actions that we associate with serious commitment. It can also account for the existence of special pressures to adopt an agential stance toward one’s future. Because hope can be cognitively rational when belief is not, there is no problematic tension between the ideal of epistemic rationality and the phenomenon of difficult action. (shrink)

L’hypothèse de travail qui régit cette contribution est que les discussions sur les rapports entre théologie et philosophie forment un thème récurrent dans la réception de Malebranche depuis les premières lectures de La Recherche de la vérité, et que cela s’explique par la rupture qu’il provoque avec les horizons d’attente des philosophes et théologiens. Rupture qui tient largement à l’enchevêtrement singulier des registres discursifs que présente son argumentaire. C’est là, nous semble-t-il, l’intérêt indéniable de la lecture – plutôt négligée par (...) la critique contemporaine – que propose Fontenelle de La Recherche de la vérité que de mettre précisément en scène ce « malaise » qu’elle produit chez ses premiers lecteurs. Elle vise ainsi à poser le problème de la frontière entre philosophie et théologie, voire à chercher à circonscrire le territoire de la première afin de lui préserver son autonomie. (shrink)

Annie Besant is primarily remembered as the international president of the Theosophical Society. One of the most important aspects of her career were the years that she was a professional atheist, which has given her a place in history as a pioneer feminist. _The Origins of Theosophy _contains thirteen of Besant’s pamphlets, originally published from 1883-1890. This book is ideal for students of theology.

L’optimum constitue un lieu théorique où convergent, au XVIIIe siècle, les trois concepts de naturel, de rationnel et d’utile. Dans cet article, il s’agit de montrer que différents discours utopiques des Lumières françaises se caractérisent par leurs manières distinctes d’articuler ces concepts. En prenant pour illustrer notre propos les utopies de Morelly et de Grivel, nous montrons que ces articulations distinctes permettent de rendre compte des tensions qui travaillent la pensée des Lumières, tout particulièrement en ce qui a trait à (...) la question du « progrès ». Le progrès est ce par quoi l’optimum est censé se réaliser dans l’histoire, et l’utopie une prétendue préfiguration de cette réalisation et l’énonciation des moyens de son actualisation. Dans cette mesure, c’est évidemment dans le problème de son caractère nécessaire, contingent ou impossible, et du rôle qu’y joue l’agentivité humaine que se pense à nouveaux frais la question du meilleur des mondes possibles. On verra, pour finir, que le discours utopique des Lumières n’est pas aussi empreint de l’optimisme que l’on a tendance à lui prêter. (shrink)

David Annis is professor of philosophy at Ball State University. In this essay, Annis offers an alternative to the foundationalist-coherent controversy: "contextualism." This theory rejects both the idea of intrinsically basic beliefs in the foundational sense and the thesis that coherence is sufficient for justification. he argues that justification is relative to the varying norms of social practices.

We often form intentions to resist anticipated future temptations. But when confronted with the temptations our resolutions were designed to withstand, we tend to revise our previous evaluative judgments and conclude that we should now succumb—only to then revert to our initial evaluations, once temptation has subsided. Some evaluative judgments made under the sway of temptation are mistaken. But not all of them are. When the belief that one should now succumb is a proper response to relevant considerations that have (...) newly emerged, can acting in line with one’s previous intention nonetheless be practically rational? To answer this question, I draw on recent debates on the nature of higher-order evidence and on what rationally responding to such evidence involves. I propose that agents facing temptation often have evidence of “deliberative unreliability”, which they ought to heed even when it is “misleading” (that is, even when their evaluative judgments are in fact proper responses to the relevant considerations then available). Because evidence of deliberative unreliability can “dispossess” agents of normative reasons for evaluative judgments and actions that they would otherwise have, being continent despite judging that one should now succumb can often be more rational than giving in. (shrink)

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged (...) artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender – so long subordinated to the structural issue of ‘race’ under apartheid – can now be explored. Penny Siopis’ work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis’ work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her ‘own’ history. (shrink)

Policies and position statements regarding decision-making for extremely premature babies exist in many countries and are often directive, focusing on parental choice and expected outcomes. These recommendations often state survival and handicap as reasons for optional intervention. The fact that such outcome statistics would not justify such approaches in other populations suggests that some other powerful factors are at work. The value of neonatal intensive care has been scrutinized far more than intensive care for older patients and suggests that neonatal (...) care is held to a higher standard of justification. The relative value placed on the life of newborns, in particular the preterm, is less than expected by any objective medical data or any prevailing moral frameworks about the value of individual lives. Why do we feel less obligated to treat the premature baby? Do we put newborns in a special and lesser moral category? We explore this question from a legal and ethical perspective and offer several hypotheses pertaining to personhood, reproductive choices, “precious children,” and probable evolutionary and anthropological factors. (shrink)

Twenty-first-century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of support for determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard ‘Mendelian approach’ university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their (...) determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon, replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future. (shrink)

Expressing doubts about death criteria can serve healthy purposes, but can also cause a number of harms, including decreased organ donation rates and distress for donor families and health care staff. This paper explores the various causes of doubts about death criteria—including religious beliefs, misinformation, mistrust, and intellectual questions—and recommends responses to each of these. Some recommended responses are relatively simple and noncontroversial, such as providing accurate information. However, other responses would require significant changes to the way we currently do (...) business. Policymakers should establish minimum national standards for determining death to foster a trustworthy system; academics and publishers have a duty to publish only materials that substantially engage and advance the debate to minimize the harm caused by divided expert opinion; and opposition to the dead donor rule should be conceptually separated from doubts about death criteria. (shrink)

En prenant l'article "Certitude" pour point focal, on veut donner à voir comment Diderot a su rassembler toute la puissance critique de l’Encyclopédie pour bousculer les certitudes de ses contemporains. Une lecture attentive de l’article permettra de voir comment Diderot se livre une composition singulière faite de pièces empruntées à des autorités. On verra ensuite que Diderot fissure lui-même ce collage en le mettant en dialogue avec des éléments externes selon une méthode sophistiquée de renvois à d’autres articles de l’Encyclopédie (...) ou à d’autres textes de collaborateurs du dictionnaire. (shrink)

This paper first investigates logical characterizations of different structures of opposition that extend the square of opposition in a way or in another. Blanché’s hexagon of opposition is based on three disjoint sets. There are at least two meaningful cubes of opposition, proposed respectively by two of the authors and by Moretti, and pioneered by philosophers such as J. N. Keynes, W. E. Johnson, for the former, and H. Reichenbach for the latter. These cubes exhibit four and six squares of (...) opposition respectively. We clarify the differences between these two cubes, and discuss their gradual extensions, as well as the one of the hexagon when vertices are no longer two-valued. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the use of these structures of opposition for discussing the comparison of two items. Comparing two items usually involves a set of relevant attributes whose values are compared, and may be expressed in terms of different modalities such as identity, similarity, difference, opposition, analogy. Recently, J.-Y. Béziau has proposed an “analogical hexagon” that organizes the relations linking these modalities. Elementary comparisons may be a matter of degree, attributes may not have the same importance. The paper studies in which ways the structure of the hexagon may be preserved in such gradual extensions. As another illustration of the graded hexagon, we start with the hexagon of equality and inequality due to R. Blanché and extend it with fuzzy equality and fuzzy inequality. Besides, the cube induced by a tetra-partition can account for the comparison of two items in terms of preference, reversed preference, indifference and non-comparability even if these notions are a matter of degree. The other cube, which organizes the relations between the different weighted qualitative aggregation modes, is more relevant for the attribute-based comparison of items in terms of similarity. (shrink)

L’étude proposée ici se déroulera en trois moments. Il s’agit, dans un premier temps, de revenir sur la manière dont la question du rapport entre vérité et fiction est posée dans le Traité des sensations de Condillac. Il faut rappeler la justification du recours à la fiction d’une statue gagnant un sens à la fois dans le cadre d’une analyse portant sur l’origine des idées, c’est-à-dire du recours à l’imagination dans le contexte d’une enquête métaphysique ressortissant à la raison. Dans (...) un second temps, il faut se pencher sur ce qu’on peut appeler la fonction du romanesque dans le dispositif global de la fiction condillacienne, c’est-à-dire, non pas seulement ce qui revient au fictionnel, mais en propre à un art narratif visant des séquences événementielles singulières. Enfin, on terminera par quelques remarques sur ce qui est très souvent négligé dans les études portant sur ce texte – du moins en philosophie, et qui ne manque pourtant pas d’être curieux, à savoir, justement, son inscription dans le registre des Mémoires ou des pseudo-Mémoires. (shrink)

Cette contribution propose une analyse comparée de la manière dont Bernard de Fontenelle, pour l’Académie des sciences de Paris, et Samuel Formey, pour l’Académie des sciences et des belles-lettres de Berlin, théorisent le rôle et le mode de fonctionnement des académies, ainsi que leur inscription dans la catégorie générale d’histoire de l’esprit humain. Cela permet de montrer comment leur fonction épistémologique est en étroite relation avec le statut politique qui leur est conféré.

-/- On connaît déjà l’importance de la question des renvois dans l’Encyclopédie, théorisée par Diderot lui-même au cours de la rédaction de l’article Encyclopédie. Cet article se penche sur un aspect de cette question en prenant appui sur la manière dont ce type de procédé de liaison s’incarne dans l’élaboration de l’Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences ainsi que dans les Tables alphabétiques qui ont été dressées pour ces volumes. Cette manière d’aborder la question apparaît d’autant plus utile qu’elle permet (...) de rendre compte d’aspects spécifiques de la pratique de Diderot comme éditeur de l’Encyclopédie. (shrink)

Cette contribution propose une analyse comparée de la manière dont Bernard de Fontenelle, pour l’Académie des sciences de Paris, et Samuel Formey, pour l’Académie des sciences et des belles-lettres de Berlin, théorisent le rôle et le mode de fonctionnement des académies, ainsi que leur inscription dans la catégorie générale d’histoire de l’esprit humain. Cela permet de montrer comment leur fonction épistémologique est en étroite relation avec le statut politique qui leur est conféré.

In this book, philosopher Jean W. Rioux extends accounts of the Aristotelian philosophy of mathematics to what Thomas Aquinas was able to import from Aristotle’s notions of pure and applied mathematics, accompanied by his own original contributions to them. Rioux sets these accounts side-by-side modern and contemporary ones, comparing their strengths and weaknesses.

Les interprétations habituelles de l’article «Éclectisme» de l’Encyclopédie mettent l’accent sur l’idée que Diderot y annonce le programme de la philosophie moderne, dont il se ferait par le fait même un illustre représentant et l’un des promoteurs. Dans cet article, j’essaie de compléter cette interprétation en montrant que l’article est également porteur d’une réflexion de premier plan sur l’histoire de la philosophie, sur les effets de continuité dans sa pratique et, conséquemment, sur ce qui est proprement constitutif du discours philosophique (...) lui-même, tant sur le plan méthodologique qu’en ce qui conc erne son positionnement politique. -/- The standard interpretation of Diderot’s article “Éclectisme” in the Encyclopédie emphasizes the idea that Diderot is setting out the program for modern philosophy, thereby making himself its illustrious representative and promoter. In thispaper, I complement this interpretation by showing that “Éclectisme” also contains an influential reflection on continuity in the history of philosophy and, consequently, on what constitutes philosophical discourse itself, both methodologically and politically. (shrink)

The family of a patient who is unconscious and respirator-dependent has made a decision to discontinue medical treatment. The patient had signed a donor card. The family wants to respect this decision, and agrees to non-heart-beating organ donation. Consequently, as the patient is weaned from the ventilator, he is prepped for organ explantation. Two minutes after the patient goes into cardiac arrest, he is declared dead and the transplant team arrives to begin organ procurement. At the time retrieval begins, it (...) is not certain that the patient's brain is dead or that cardiac function cannot be restored. Procurement follows uneventfully, and two transplantable kidneys are retrieved. (shrink)

Dans cette contribution, nous nous penchons sur la figure du bonheur paradoxal qui, dans les "Rêveries du promeneur solitaire" de Rousseau, se définit au sein d’un jeu de tensions multiples. Si le bonheur exige la solitude, il est toujours hanté par l’altérité ; si sa source est en soi-même, il ne cesse toutefois de dépendre de circonstances contingentes ; et si, enfin, il s’éprouve tout entier dans le sentiment, il s’agit pourtant d’un sentiment augmenté d’un caractère réfléchi ou, pour mieux (...) dire, redoublé dans le souvenir que retrace l’écriture. Dans tous les cas, ces antinomies du bonheur – sur lesquelles nous reviendrons longuement plus loin – s’enracinent dans une marqueterie de références dont l’hétérogénéité est l’expression d’un dialogue tendu au sein duquel, comme nous souhaiterions d’abord le montrer, la philosophie morale des Anciens se réinvente en adoptant le langage, éminemment moderne, du sentiment. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Al Mele (2003) suggests that the Simple View of intentional action is “fiction” because it is “wholly unconstrained” by a widely shared (folk) concept of intentional action. The Simple View (Adams, 1986, McCann, 1986) states that an action is intentional only if intended. As evidence that the Simple View is not in accord with the folk notion of intentional action, Mele appeals to recent surveys of folk judgments by Joshua Knobe (2003, 2004a, 2004b). Knobe’s surveys appear (...) to show that the folk judge unintended but known side effects of actions to be performed intentionally. In this paper we will reject Mele’s suggestion that the Simple View is “fiction.” We will also discuss the relationship between surveys and philosophical theories, and the abilities of surveys to access folk core concepts. We will argue that considerations of both fail to support Mele’s suggestion. (shrink)

This paper examines the social and organizational innovation processes undertaken by small-scale producers engaged in short food supply chains in the North Swedish region of Västerbotten. The study uses the notion of proximity to empirically analyse and conceptually explore these phenomena. The paper illustrates the ‘new associationalism’ mobilized by producers in order to promote knowledge exchange and learning and highlights the role of translocal practices in sustaining this transition. The study found that open and trusted interactions with consumers are central (...) to the development of ‘quasi-organic’ practices, and that producers belong to numerous motley associations of food professionals facilitating the creation of collective meanings about near-produced quality food. The paper contributes to the rapprochement between agri-food studies and human geography to understand the formation of local food systems from an evolutionary and relational perspective. (shrink)

À la toute fin de l’article « Épicuréisme ou Épicurisme » de l’Encyclopédie, après une adaptation très particulière de l’information qu’il a trouvée dans l’Historia Critica Philosophiae de Brucker, Diderot écrit une brève histoire de l’épicurisme moderne se concluant par cette phrase significative : « en quelque lieu & en quelque tems que ce soit, la secte épicurienne n’a jamais eu plus d’éclat qu’en France, & sur-tout pendant le siecle dernier. » Ma contribution prend prétexte cette affirmation pour essayer de (...) penser ce que signifie, pour Diderot, constituer une secte épicurienne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Il devient alors possible de clarifier ce que sont les modalités du rapport à l’histoire de la philosophie impliquées dans cette affirmation, et le sens que Diderot prête à la filiation et à l’héritages philosophiques. Penser l’épicurisme moderne devient une manière de contester le récit simplificateur d’une modernité qui ne se définirait que par la rupture avec le passé. (shrink)

1. There are two distinct lines of research that aim at modelling belief and knowledge: modal logic and uncertainty theories. Modal logic extends classical logic by introducing knowledge or belief...

The extremely preterm infant, born before 28 weeks of gestational age, has been the focus of much ethical discussion. These infants have a significant risk of mortality and morbidity, and it is not...

In this study, we examined the perception of actual and ideal ethical climate type among 95 nurses working in the internal medicine wards of one central hospital in the state of Israel. We also examined whether nurses’ demographic characteristics influence that perception and if a relationship between perceptions of an actual and an ideal ethical climate type influences nurses’ job satisfaction. A questionnaire composed of three subquestionnaires was administered and the responses analyzed using multiple linear regressions, analysis of variance and (...) Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that demographic characteristics (such as: gender, job tenure and level of education) partially influence the perception of an ideal ethical climate. Incongruence in perceptions of ‘caring’ and ‘independence’ climate types indicated a decline in nurses’ job satisfaction, while perception of actual ‘caring’ and ‘service’ climates positively influenced all aspects of job satisfaction. We recommend constructing training programs emphasizing the ethics of nursing practice and also to help lead nurses to clarify an ethical framework and guide nursing staff in dealing with ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

To what level are invisible stimuli processed by the brain in the absence of conscious awareness? It is widely accepted that simple visual properties of invisible stimuli are processed; however, the existence of higher-level unconscious processing (e.g., involving semantic or executive functions) remains a matter of debate. Several methodological factors may underlie the discrepancies found in the literature, such as different levels of conservativeness in the definition of "unconscious" or different dependent measures of unconscious processing. In this research topic, we (...) are particularly interested in yet another factor: inherent differences in the amount of information let through by different suppression techniques. In the same conditions of well-controlled, conservatively established invisibility, can we show that some of the techniques in the "psychophysical magic" arsenal (e.g., masking, but also visual crowding, attentional blink, etc.) reliably lead to higher-level unconscious processing than others (e.g., interocular suppression)? Some authors have started investigating this question, using multiple techniques in similar settings. We argue that this approach should be extended and refined. Indeed, in order to delineate the frontiers of the unconscious mind using a contrastive method, one has to disentangle the limits attributable to unawareness itself, and those attributable to the technique inducing unawareness. The scope of this research topic is to provide a platform for scientists to contribute insights and further experiments addressing this fundamental question. (shrink)

Carey proposes a theory of conceptual development that specifies innate conceptual representations that get learning started. Those representations are the output of innate domain-specific input analyzers. I contend that innate core cognition about agency is itself a gradual construction and that the role of Quinian bootstrapping needs elaboration to account for the development of intuitive theories of psychology.

Il est notoire que dans l’histoire de l’esprit à la constitution de laquelle Fontenelle participe activement, Descartes occupe une place toute particulière, notamment en ce qui a trait à la fabrication du concept de modernité et de la philosophie qui y est associée. Pourtant, et c’est ce que nous nous proposons d’explorer ici, il faut encore prendre la mesure de ce qui, dans la philosophie cartésienne, correspond au sens propre à cette modernité et le départager de ce qui ne sert (...) qu’à tracer le portrait d’une figure exemplaire constitutive de l’écriture de l’histoire à l’âge classique. Ce que nous proposons, donc, c’est de distinguer trois registres discursifs faisant jouer au nom « Descartes » des fonctions différentes et attachées à des enjeux philosophiques hétérogènes, lesquels permettent de saisir les tensions à l’œuvre dans le traitement réservé à Descartes par Fontenelle. Le premier de ces registres concerne la figure historique de Descartes en tant que fondateur d’une manière de penser qui définirait la modernité elle-même ; le second porte sur la nature de cette fondation, qui est constamment rapportée par Fontenelle à la question de la méthode, alors même qu’il en détourne l’esprit ; le troisième, enfin, intéresse le contenu de la philosophie cartésienne et les raisons de l’attachement de Fontenelle à la théorie des tourbillons en dépit du progrès du newtonianisme chez ses contemporains. (shrink)

Despite recent critiques of agrofuels, the industry is booming, signaling transformations in the world's food and fuels systems. International financial institutions, biotechnology firms, governments, and agribusiness are restructuring control over land, genetic resources, economic space, and market power. These moves prefer transnational capital at the expense of farmers in the North and extensive areas vital to the livelihoods of small producers in the Global South. This article suggests that the agrofuels boom may be a new—and particularly destructive—stage in industry's extractive (...) transformations of agriculture. The movement-based logic of food sovereignty—people's right to define their own food and agriculture systems—suggests a rollback of the “agrofuels transition” is possible. (shrink)

Ce recueil de textes propose de contribuer à l’histoire des grandes académies scientifiques européennes. Plutôt que de vouloir tenter d’en dégager une homogénéité discutable, les études réunies tentent, au contraire, de montrer comment la pratique académique trouve son unité dans un ensemble de querelles.

Georg Cantor argued that pure mathematics would be better-designated “free mathematics” since mathematical inquiry need not justify its discoveries through some extra-mental standard. Even so, he spent much of his later life addressing ancient and scholastic objections to his own transfinite number theory. Some philosophers have argued that Cantor need not have bothered. Thomas Aquinas at least, and perhaps Aristotle, would have consistently embraced developments in number theory, including the transfinite numbers. The author of this paper asks whether the restriction (...) of arithmetic to the natural numbers that is apparently assumed by Aristotle and Aquinas is necessary in the light of their stated principles. The author concludes that, while some texts from Aristotle and Thomas suggest that such discoveries as zero, rational, and real numbers, and even Cantor’s own transfinite numbers, are legitimate objects of scientific knowledge, a careful analysis shows that they are incompatible with the ultimate arithmetical principle, the unit. (shrink)