This Element defends a version of the classical theory of divine ideas, the containment exemplarist theory of divine ideas. The classical theory holds that God has ideas of all possible creatures, that these ideas partially explain why God's creation of the world is a rational and free personal action, and that God does not depend on anything external to himself for having the ideas he has. The containment exemplarist version of the classical theory holds that God's own nature is the (...) exemplar of all possible creatures, and therefore that God's ideas of possible creatures are in some sense ideas of himself. Containment exemplarism offers a monotheism fit for metaphysics, insofar as it is coherent, simple, and explanatorily powerful; and offers a metaphysics fit for monotheism, insofar as it leaves God truly worthy of the unconditional worship which Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, aspire to offer to God. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of Spinoza's metaphysics of the essences of modes.2 I situate Spinoza's use of the notion of essence as a response to traditional, Aristotelian, ways of thinking about essence. I argue that, although Spinoza rejects part of the Aristotelian conception of essence, according to which it is in virtue of its essence that a thing is a member of a kind, he nevertheless retains a different part of such a conception, according to which an essence is (...) some structural feature of a thing which causally explains other, non-essential features. I go on to develop an account of Spinoza's metaphysics of essence, according to which essences, what he sometimes calls formal essences, are produced by the divine essence prior to and independent of the creation of finite modes, and according to which essences are the formal or exemplar causes of finite modes. I then argue that finite modes, in virtue of the formal essences which they actualize, are genuine causal relata. Finally, I offer some speculations about Spinoza's answer to the question, "Why, in a necessitarian cosmos filled with formal essences, should there be temporal finite modes at all?". (shrink)

Ward examines Scotus's arguments for his distinctive version of hylomorphism, the view that at least some material objects are composites of matter and form. It considers Scotus's reasons for adopting hylomorphism, and his accounts of how matter and form compose a substance, how extended parts, such as the organs of an organism, compose a substance, and how other sorts of things, such as the four chemical elements and all the things in the world, fail to compose a substance. It highlights (...) the extent to which Scotus draws on his metaphysics of essential order to explain why some things can compose substance and why others cannot. Throughout the book, contemporary versions of hylomorphism are discussed in ways that both illumine Scotus's own views and suggest ways to advance contemporary debates. (shrink)

In his ethical writings, Duns Scotus emphasized both divine freedom and natural goodness, and these seem to conflict with each other in various ways. I offer an interpretation of Scotus which takes seriously these twin emphases and shows how they cohere. I argue that, for Scotus, all natural laws obtain just by the natures of actual things. Divine commands, such as the Ten Commandments, contingently track natural laws but do not make natural laws to be natural laws. I present textual (...) evidence for this claim. I also show how this view of Scotus on the natural law is consistent with a number of troubling passages. Scotus’s ethical theory implies that there are genuinely moral reasons for acting which are not absolutely binding (because subject to a divine command or permission otherwise) and also some moral reasons for acting which are absolutely binding (because not thus subject). (shrink)

This article presents a new interpretation and critique of some aspects of Aquinas’s metaphysics of relations, with special reference to a theological problem—the relation of God to creatures—that catalyzed Aquinas’s and much medieval thought on the ontology of relations. I will show that Aquinas’s ontologically reductive theory of categorical real relations should equip him to identify certain relations as real relations, which he actually identifies as relations of reason, most notably the relation of God to creatures.

Gaunilo’s Lost Island Objection to Anselm’s Ontological Argument aims to show that if Anselm’s argument can establish the existence of a greatest conceivable being then a very similar argument can establish the existence of a greatest conceivable island. The challenge for the defender of Anselm is to identify the relevant disanalogy between Anselm’s argument and Gaunilo’s, in order to explain why Anselm’s can succeed while Gaunilo’s fails. In this essay I take up this challenge. Reflection on the differences between the (...) nature of islands and the nature of being yields the relevant disanalogy. (shrink)

This article discusses the concept of epistemic authority in the context of English law relating to expert testimony. It distinguishes between two conceptions of epistemic authority, one strong and one weak, and argues that only the weak conception is appropriate in a legal context, or in any other setting where reliance on experts can be publicly justified. It critically examines Linda Zagzebski's defence of a stronger conception of epistemic authority and questions whether epistemic authority is as closely analogous to practical (...) authority as she maintains. Zagzebski elucidates a kind of deference that courts generally, and rightly, try to avoid. Her concept of ‘first person reasons’, however, does capture an important aspect of the deliberations of conscientious legal actors. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the metaphysical assumptions behind Aquinas’s denials that a human rational soul unites with matter at conception and that a human rational soul is capable of developing and arranging the organic parts of an embryo. The paper argues that Buridan does not share these assumptions and holds that a soul is capable of developing and arranging organic parts. It argues that, given hylomorphism about the nature of organisms, including human beings, Buridan’s view is philosophically superior to (...) Aquinas’s in several respects. Finally, the paper poses an apparent inconsistency between several of Buridan’s texts on this topic and attempts to show that the inconsistency is merely apparent. (shrink)

The two most important concepts in Duns Scotus's theology of the Atonement are satisfaction and merit. Just what these amount to and how they function in his theory are heavily conditioned by two more general commitments: Scotus's voluntarism, which includes the claim that nearly all of God's relations with the created order are contingent; and his formulation of the Franciscan Thesis, which holds that fixing the sin problem is not the primary purpose of God's Incarnation in Christ and that if (...) Adam hadn't sinned God would have become incarnate anyway. In this essay I will discuss this theoretical background of Scotus's atonement theology before moving on to discuss his understanding of merit and satisfaction, how these are related, and how they relate to the theoretical background. I will engage some important recent scholarly attempts to position Scotus's Atonement theology as not quite as anti-Anselmian as history has characterized it, arguing that one of these attributes to Scotus an understanding of merit which cannot be Scotus's in fact, since it entails a restriction on divine freedom that Scotus certainly would reject. (shrink)

Could God command us to hate him? Here I offer two arguments that He cannot. I also argue that this restriction on God’s power is consistent with a strong doctrine of omnipotence according to which God can do anything broadly logical possible.

This paper presents an original interpretation of John Duns Scotus’s theory of hylomorphism. I argue that Scotus thinks, contrary to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, that at least some of the extended parts of a substance—paradigmatically the organs of an animal—are themselves substances. Moreover, Scotus thinks that the form of corporeity is nothing more than the substantial forms of these organic parts. I offer an account of how Scotus thinks that the various extended parts of an animal are substantially unified. First, (...) a plurality of substances can become parts of a complex substance if they are essentially ordered to one another in the order of final causality. Second, a plurality of substances do become parts of a complex substance if they are together informed by a soul. The paper closes with some reflections on some of the ramifications of the substancehood of organic parts on the function of soul. (shrink)

The two most important concepts in Duns Scotus's (1265/6‐1308) theology of the Atonement are satisfaction and merit. Just what these amount to and how they function in his theory are heavily conditioned by two more general commitments: Scotus's voluntarism, which includes the claim that nearly all of God's relations with the created order are contingent; and his formulation of the Franciscan Thesis, which holds that fixing the sin problem is not the primary purpose of God's Incarnation in Christ and that (...) if Adam hadn't sinned God would have become incarnate anyway. In this essay I will discuss the theoretical background of Scotus's atonement theology—his voluntarism and his version of the Franciscan Thesis—before moving on to discuss his understanding of merit and satisfaction, how these are related, and how they relate to the theoretical background. I will engage some important recent scholarly attempts to position Scotus's Atonement theology as not quite as anti‐Anselmian as history has characterized it, arguing that one of these attributes to Scotus an understanding of merit which cannot be Scotus's in fact, since it entails a restriction on divine freedom that Scotus certainly would reject. (shrink)

This paper develops a view of worship according to which worship is a certain sort of _life orientation_, and argues that according to the Bible, the worship of God normatively is _non-instrumental, comprehensive, unconditional orientation of one’s life toward God_. It then develops a biblical view about how this sort of worship of God is _possible_. Finally, it argues that it is _good_ to worship God in this way only if God is an Anselmian being—_that than which nothing greater can (...) be conceived_—and suggests that the God of the Bible, the Psalms in particular, is in fact an Anselmian being. (shrink)

Workers with involuntary clients influence the behaviour of their clients. One of the methods by which workers influence their clients relates to the way they model, encourage or reinforce their comments and behaviours. Practitioners may be aware or unaware of this process and of the extent to which it can impact on clients. This paper describes the process of modelling and reinforcement and discusses some of the ethical issues it raises. It suggests some guidelines by which the process may be (...) undertaken in an ethical manner and recommends the use of the ethics of care and concept of human dignity as additional theoretical resources to assist in working with this client group. (shrink)

A test for the admissibility of expert evidence, partly derived from Daubert, has recently been introduced into English criminal law by the unusual mechanism of aPractice Direction.This article compares the Daubert trilogy and the English Practice Direction as responses to the problem of epistemic deference by juries to experts. Juries areoften justified in deferring to experts as to the relevance of the underlying evidence examined by the expert, including what inferences can be drawn from it. There is a concern, however, (...) that juries may also defer to experts’ claims about the weight of their own evidence: how strongly or confidently those inferences can be stated. Overly deferential jurors may place excessive weight on forensic science evidence that rests on shaky foundations. The new English admissibility regime (drawing on recommendations by the Law Commission) appears better tailored than Daubert to address this issue about the strength of inferences presented by expert witnesses. As a result, however, it places considerable demands in judges, advocates and expert witnesses, and how successful it will be in practice remains to be seen. (shrink)

Byrne (2005) demonstrates that reasoning and imagination are logical and governed by the same processing principles. In extending those principles to other forms of imaginative functioning, however, problems arise. The meaning of is stretched, and the causal role of the principles is not well established. Nevertheless, consideration of the extent to which ordinary cognitive processes govern creative functioning is valuable.

I do not think scholars have thought hard enough about Scotus’s position that there are necessary moral truths over which God has no control. Just about everyone who writes on Scotus’s ethics has noted this position, but none has paid sufficient philosophical attention to it. It turns out that necessary moral truths are logically necessary (in Scotus’s sense of logical modalities), and the fact that they are logically necessary significantly alters how we should understand radical-sounding claims in Scotus to the (...) effect that God can do whatever is logically possible. Demonstrably, what Scotus means is that God can do whatever it is logically possible for God to do, and this class is rather smaller than the class of the logically possible simpliciter. (shrink)

This article focuses on some topics in Jeffrey Brower’s recent and excellent book, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects. Part of Brower’s goal for the book is to reconstruct Aquinas’s views. I offer some reflections on Brower’s use of this metaphor of reconstruction, before considering four topics in some detail. These are: 1. Brower’s discussion of the relation between Aristotle’s Ten Categories and the not-obviously-connected four-fold division of being into substance, form, prime matter, and accidental (...) unity. 2. Brower’s interpretation of prime matter as “non-individual stuff.” 3. Brower’s account of numerical sameness without identity along with some discussion of how this is supposed to be useful for solving a particular puzzle about accidental change. 4. I’ll close with some reflections on Brower’s somewhat novel solution to a longstanding problem with Aquinas’s metaphysics of the afterlife. (shrink)

I motivate and develop a view, found in John Duns Scotus, concerning God's explanatory role in the possibility of possible natures. A possible nature is a nature which can be instanced. The view is that possible natures have their possibility due to the coherence of their simple parts, but the simples which make up natures are themselves ex nihilo productions of divine intellect.

Taking Aquinas's metaphysics of human nature as my point of departure and taking inspiration from Dante's concept of transhumanization, I sketch a metaphysics of the afterlife according to which a human person in the interim phase between death and resurrection is not a mere disembodied soul. I offer some theological reasons for thinking that our bodily human nature is essential to what we are and for thinking that we can survive the destruction of our bodies at death. I argue that (...) these claims are consistent, provided we hold that our bodily human nature, while essential to what we are, is not necessary to what we are. I argue for this distinction between essence and necessity. I then raise a mereological puzzle about the relation between a disembodied soul and the person whose soul it is, and argue that, if we are to avoid the Cartesian conclusion that this relation is identity, we must hold that a human person, even in the interim phase, is composed of a soul and something else. Drawing on Dante's concept of transhumanization, I argue that this something else is God himself or some specially created divine grace or energy. (shrink)