Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Contents of Program:
1. Schedule of Events……………………….1
2. Details of Satellite Session.…………..6
3. Abstracts of Contributed Papers….18
I. Schedule of Events
Thursday (Nov. 16)
1
11. ACPA Sponsored Satellite Session - I
12. ACPA Sponsored Satellite Session - II
Philosophy of Nature - 1
Chair: Tom McLaughlin, St. John Vianney Seminary, Denver
Speaker: Christopher O. Blum, Augustine Institute
“Nature & Modernity: Can one philosophize about nature today?”
Comments: John G. Brungardt, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Speaker: Rev. Robert Verrill, O.P., Baylor University
“Elementary Particles are not Substances”
Comments: Timothy Kearns, Legionaries of Christ, College of Humanities
Epistemology
Chair: Carl N. Still, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan
Speaker: Christopher Tomaszewski, Baylor University
“A Geachian Cure for Morally Paralyzed Skeptical Theists”
Comments: Max G. Parish, The University of Oklahoma
Speaker: Joseph Gamache, Boston University, Recipient of the ACPA’s Young
Scholar’s Award 2017
“Doxastic Involuntarism and Evidentialism: A Curious Modern
Conjunction”
Comments: Geoffrey Karabin, Neumann University
Metaphysics
Chair: Joseph M. Forte, Northeast Catholic College
Speaker: Karl Hahn, Villanova University
“’The Mystical is Everything Speculative’: Natural Theology in Hegel’s
Philosophy of Religion”
Comments: James M. Murdoch Jr., Villanova University
Speaker: Maria Fedoryka, Ave Maria University
2
“’God is Love’: Personal Plurality as the Completion of Aristotle’s Notion
of Substance and Love as the Absolute Ground of Divine Being”
Comments: R. Glen Coughlin, Thomas Aquinas College
Plenary Lecture: His Excellency, the Most Reverend Daniel E. Flores, S.T.D.
Bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville, TX
“Belonging to the WORD made flesh”
9-11:30p: Reception
3
1:15-3:15p: ACPA Contributed Papers (Saturday Afternoon):
Philosophy of Nature - 2
Chair: Rev. Robert Verrill, O.P., Baylor University
Speaker: Marco Stango, Pennsylvania State University, Juniata College
“Understanding Hylomorphic Dualism”
Comments: Philip Solorzano, University of Dallas
Speaker: Chad Engelland, University of Dallas
“Dispositive Causality and the Art of Medicine”
Comments: Jacob Tuttle, Loyola Marymount University
Ethics
Chair: Megan Furman, University of Dallas
Speaker: Hilary Yancey, Baylor University
“Frontiers of Analogous Justice: A Thomistic Approach to Martha
Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals”
Comments: Daniel Maher, Assumption College
Speaker: Gregory M. Reichberg, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
“Restrictive versus Permissive Double Effect: Interpreting Aquinas”
Comments: Daniel Shields, Pontifical College Josephinum
Mereology
Chair: Alina Beary, Baylor University
Speaker: Joshua Lee Harris, Institute for Christian Studies
“Things within Things? Toward a Ontology of the Firm”
Comments: Eric Mabry, Christ the King Seminary, NY
Speaker: Lindsay K. Cleveland, Baylor University
“Property Characterization and the Status of Accidental Unities in
Aquinas: A Response to Brower”
Comments: Kelly Gallagher, University of South Carolina
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29. Thomas Aquinas: On the Creation and Nature of
Man and Woman
30. Society for Thomistic Personalism
31. Aquinas and Postmodernity Project - II
32. Thomas Aquinas College - II
33. Philosophers in Jesuit Education
34. Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology - II
35. Institute for Saint Anselm Studies
36. The Memorial University of Newfoundland
& Villanova University - II
5
II. Details of Satellite Sessions
Satellite Sessions (Friday Morning, 10a-12p)
7
Speaker 2: Geoffrey Meadows and John H. Boyer, University of St. Thomas, TX
“Quantum Mechanics and God”
Speaker 3: Christopher Martin, University of St. Thomas, TX
“Aquinas and the Existence of God”
8
12. ACPA Sponsored Satellite Session - II
Topic: Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind
Chair: Christopher Tomaszewski, Baylor University
Speaker 1: Luis Pinto de Sa, Saint Louis University
“Knowledge, Understanding and Well-Being”
Speaker 2: Stephen Ogden, The Catholic University of America
“From Universal Form to Universal Nous”
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16. Society of Christian Philosophers
Topic: Autonomy and Moral Education
Organizers: John Schwenkler, Florida State University
Chair: Paul Blaschko, University of Notre Dame
Speaker 1: Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Northwestern University
“Educating for Autonomy: An Old Fashioned View”
Commentator: Nathaniel Helms, University of Oxford
Speaker 2: Ryan West, Grove City College
“Remedial Virtues and the Task of Becoming Good”
Commentator: Maria Altepeter, Washington University in St. Louis
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20. Baylor Philosophy - I
Topic: Metaphysics and Ethics- Thomistic and Contemporary
Organizer: Chris Tweedt, Christopher Newport University
Chair: Allison Krile Thornton, Baylor University
Speaker 1: Christopher Tomaszewski, Baylor University
“The Supplemented Soul: Thomistic Corruptionism and Mereology”
Speaker 2: Allison Krile Thornton, Baylor University
“Five Ways Animalists Would Change Their View If They Listened to
Biologists”
Speaker 3: Sarah Gutierrez, Baylor University
“Aquinas and Intellectual Autonomy”
Speaker 4: Chris Tweedt, Christopher Newport University
“Euthanasia: A Way of Enabling Patient Sacrifice”
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Speaker 2: Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., University of St. Thomas, TX
“Which Essence is Brought Into Being by The Existential Act?”
Speaker 3: Rev. Stephen L. Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
“Between Potency and Act? The Status of Created Form in Aquinas”
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29. Thomas Aquinas: On the Creation and Nature of Man and Woman
Organizer & Chair: John Finley, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
Speaker 1: Deborah Savage, St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, MN
“The Nature of Woman in Relation to Man: Genesis 1 and 2 Through the
Lens of the Metaphysical Anthropology of Aquinas”
Speaker 2: Mathew Walz, University of Dallas
“Creator, Artist, Doer: Aquinas on God's Bringing-Forth of Man and
Woman”
Speaker 3: John Finley, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
“Sexual Difference in Relation to the Human Person and the Human
Essence”
13
“Technology and Self-Cultivation: Meeting the Challenges of Jesuit
Education in an ‘On-Demand’ Culture”
14
Speaker 2: Robert C. Koons, University of Texas, Austin
“Hylomorphism and our Knowledge of Objective Value”
Speaker 3: Michael Baur, Fordham University
“From Being and Goodness to Law and Order: The Metaphysics of
Natural Law in Aquinas”
39. The Society for the Study of Nature and the Philosophy of Science
Topic : Substance, Form, and Theory in Natural Science
Organizer: John G. Brungardt, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Chair: Ryan Shea, Providence College
Speaker 1: John G. Brungardt
“The Relevance of the Formal Causality to Resolutions of the Meta-Law
Dilemma in Cosmology”
Speaker 2: Ryan Shea
“Exemplary Thinking: Aristotle's Kurioi and T. S. Kuhn's Paradigms”
Speaker 3: Rev. Thomas Davenport, O.P., The Catholic University of America
“How About Them Apples? A Case Study in Substantial Unity”
15
Speaker 2: Patrick McDonald, Seattle Pacific University
and Phillip Goggans, Morehead State University; Independent Scholar
“Original Sin, Human Evolution, and Gene-Culture Interactions”
Speaker 3: Marie George, St. John’s University, NY
“Does Might Make Right in the Animal Kingdom or do Some Animals Act
on Moral Grounds as Well?”
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45. Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group - II
Topic: Metaphysics and Religion
Organizer: Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, St. Gregory the Great Seminary
(Lincoln, Nebraska); Universidad Panamericana (Mexico)
Chair: Therese Cory, University of Notre Dame
Speaker 1: David B. Twetten, Marquette University
“Aquinas with Avicenna Really Distinguishing Esse and Essence”
Speaker 2: Rollen E. Houser, University of St. Thomas, TX
“Avicenna and the Five Ways”
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III. Abstracts of Contributed Papers
Session 1: Philosophy of Nature - 1
A salient feature of modernity has been the rejection of nature as an authoritative ground of
intelligibility and value, a position once defended by nearly all Catholic philosophers. Since Fr. Ernan
McMullin’s 1969 article “Philosophies of Nature,” however, the philosophy of nature has been eclipsed
by the philosophy of science in mainstream Catholic philosophy. After examining McMullin’s reasons for
setting aside the philosophy of nature and Thomas Nagel’s recent re-affirmation of the possibility of a
philosophical reflection upon nature prior to the claims of empirical science, this article responds to
McMullin’s critique and defends the viability of an Aristotelian understanding of nature today.
The doctrine of the salvation of souls is obviously central to our Christian faith. Yet one of the challenges
of communicating this truth is that many people have ontological commitments that don't even allow
for the existence of souls. Therefore a philosophical understanding of physical reality which is
compatible with a Christian understanding of the human person is especially important if we are to
preach the Gospel effectively in the modern age. Like many Christian philosophers, I believe that St.
Thomas Aquinas provides us with such a philosophical understanding of physical reality. Nevertheless,
we need to be careful in how we map Aquinas' philosophical concepts onto physical phenomena. It is
with this concern in mind that I will argue that elementary particles are not substances.
Session 2: Epistemology
Skeptical theism is a popular response to the evidential problem of evil, but it has recently been accused
of proving too much. If skeptical theism is true, its detractors claim, then we not only have no good
reason for thinking that God’s reasons for action should be available to creatures like us, but we also
have no good reason for thinking that the reasons which govern how we ought to act should be
available to creatures like us. And given this ignorance, we would be morally paralyzed, unable to decide
what we ought to do in ordinary situations that call for a moral decision. In this paper, I present a simple
solution to this problem of moral paralysis by drawing on Peter Geach’s now famous argument for the
attributivity of “good.”
It is a curious feature of early modern (specifically empiricist) epistemology and its contemporary heirs
in analytic philosophy both that belief is held to be involuntary (doxastic involuntarism), and that belief
is held to a prescriptive norm of evidence (evidentialism). I begin by laying out these theses, pointing out
the tension that exists between them, as well as discussing how they put pressure on religious faith. I
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then ask why the first thesis—doxastic involuntarism—has come to be so dominant. Following my
diagnosis, I advance reasons to think that the thin concept of belief presupposed by doxastic
involuntarism is not faithful to our ordinary and more substantial concept of belief. I conclude by
outlining an alternative understanding of what it means to believe that p, based on insights of St.
Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Marcel regarding belief and opinion, as well as the relationship between
persons and their beliefs.
Session 3: Metaphysics
Hegel is a towering figure in modern philosophy, and he is interestingly a thinker for whom philosophical
modernity and traditional religion are necessary partners in the pursuit of a shared truth. In this paper, I
use Hegel’s unique rendition on natural theology as a test-case for examining the intersection of
traditional Christian religion and Idealist reason in Hegel’s philosophical modernity. Specifically, I raise
the question of whether Hegel’s philosophy of religion is faithful to what philosopher William Desmond
has called the “religious between”, within which God exists as superior, transcendent other to the finite
human being existing in created dependence on Him. I argue that Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of
Religion contain a German idealist conception of natural theology that counterfeits this “between” by
subordinating it to a pseudo-mystical quest for noetic union with God that obliterates what should be
the irreducible difference between the human and the divine essence.
In my reflections I will, firstly, propose a solution to the Trinitarian problem of the “three-in-one”, and
secondly, show how love is foundational to the divine being. Beginning with the Aristotelian notion of
substance, I will show how substance undergoes a first modification in the consideration that substance
finds its fullest realization in person existing in a love-relation with another person. The highest instance
of this, in turn, will prove to be found in persons whose very essences are constituted by such
relationality and the communion resulting from it. This will force a second modification of substance:
the unity of substance will turn out to have its highest instance in the moral unity of a plurality of
persons existing in love – which leads to the solution of the “three-in-one” problem. I will end by
reflecting on the foundational role of love with respect to absolute being.
“A Fruitful Crisis of Belief: Hans Jonas on a Proper Mode of Faith within the Context of Modernity”
Matthew Pietropaoli, The Catholic University of America
The philosopher Hans Jonas penned several essays illustrating how modern thought represents a
revolutionary overturning of previously held religious beliefs. The new paradigms of thought toppled
prior worldviews of Christianity. Thus, modernity represents a crisis for religious belief. And yet, Jonas
contends that modern thought may paradoxically provide the occasion for a deeper encounter with
God.
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This paper will examine Jonas’s discussions on both the challenge and opportunity which
modern thought presents to Christianity. First, I will address Jonas’s understanding of how modern
science transformed the Christian, God-centered view of the universe, showing, instead, a world
following from impersonal laws. Second, I look briefly at Jonas’s understanding of how Rudolph
Bultmann responded to this crisis by attempting to “de-mythologize” faith. Third, I will show Jonas’s
thoughts that the challenge of modern science to Christian cosmology allows the believer the
opportunity for a closer connection to God, moving beyond beliefs and into relationship.
“Grace, Natura Pura, and the Metaphysics of Status: Personalism and Thomism
on the Historicity of the Human Person and the Genealogy of Modernity”
Mark K. Spencer, University of St. Thomas, MN
Christian Personalists (such as Balthasar and Yannaras) have objected to Thomism’s claim that humans
could have existed in a state (status) of pure nature, on the grounds that this claim entails that historical
states like grace do not give fundamental meaning to us, that these states are merely accidental, and
that it led to modern secularism. I show that Thomism can affirm its traditional claims regarding grace
and pure nature, while denying the first two implications, by developing the Thomistic metaphysics of
status. On Thomism rightly understood persons develop historically through status in non-accidental
ways and grace gives fundamental meaning to our lives. But I also argue that modern secular
experiences (such as experiences of secularity, anxiety, and absurdity described by Heidegger, Camus,
and Taylor) are natural to the human person, not merely the result of sin, and that this is rightly
supported by the theory of pure nature.
This paper claims that Aquinas’s philosophy of mind should be read as a form of strong hylomorphic
dualism. After distinguishing between weak and strong hylomorphic dualism and showing, against the
standard reading, that Aquinas takes the so-called mind-body interaction problem seriously, this paper
reconstructs two arguments provided by Aquinas to prove that his position is best understood as strong
hylomorphic dualism. Finally, the paper shows that Aquinas thinks of the relationship between intellect
and phantasms in terms of what could be called diagrammatic causality, as exemplified by his treatment
of the phenomena of abstraction and attention to the phantasms.
For many philosophers, the relation of medicine to health is exemplary for understanding the relation
of human power to nature in general. Drawing on Heidegger and Aquinas, this paper examines the
relation of art to nature as it emerges in the second book of Aristotle’s Physics, and it does so by
articulating the duality of efficient causality. The art of medicine operates as a dispositive cause rather
than as a perfective cause; it removes obstacles to the achievement of health, but it does not impose
health. Medicine, on this conception, aids the efficient causality of the natural body rather than
substituting for it. The loss of dispositive causality makes efficient causality an imposition of force which
bypasses the natural power to achieve natural goods. The paper concludes, with Plato, by arguing that
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dispositive causality offers a way to understand not only medicine but also governing, teaching, and
parenting.
This paper considers the possibility of a disembodied conscious soul, arguing that a great deal of current
research converges in a direction that denies the possibility of a bodiless consciousness for human
beings. Contemporary attacks on Cartesianism also serve as attacks on the view of some hylomorphist
Catholics, such as Thomas Aquinas, that there can be a disembodied consciousness between death and
resurrection, a view that violates the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, there may be a way
out for the Catholic hylomorphist which was suggested by Dante—the possibility of a temporary body.
The first section of the paper will summarize the contemporary attack against both the Cartesian soul
and physicalist systems that reduce the mind to the brain. The alternative position proposed is that the
human being is a psychosomatic unity at the level of the organism as a whole, and that both mind-body
and brain-body dualism should be avoided. Such a position, I will argue, supports the notion that a
disembodied soul, including a disembodied consciousness, is not possible for human beings. Finally, I
will discuss Dante’s views on temporary bodies and explore three ways of understanding a temporary
body, any of which can preserve a conscious intermediate state between death and resurrection.
“Complex Survivalism, or: How to Lose Your Essence and Live to Tell About It”
Jeremy W. Skrzypek, University of Mary
Of those who defend a Thomistic hylomorphic account of human persons, “survivalists” hold that the
persistence of the human person’s rational soul between death and the resurrection is sufficient to
maintain the persistence of the human person herself throughout that interim. (“Corruptionists” deny
this.) According to survivalists, at death, and until the resurrection, a human person comes to be
temporarily composed of, but not identical to, her rational soul. One of the major objections to
survivalism is that it is committed to a rejection of a widely accepted mereological principle called the
weak-supplementation principle, according to which any composite whole must, at any moment of its
existence, possess more than one proper part. In this paper, I argue that by recognizing the existence of
certain other metaphysical parts of a human person beyond her prime matter and her rational soul,
hylomorphists can adhere to survivalism without violating the weak-supplementation principle.
Session 7: Ethics
“Frontiers of Analogous Justice: A Thomistic Approach to Martha Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals”
Hilary Yancey, Baylor University
In this paper I argue for a Thomistic alternative to Martha Nussbaum’s justice for animals as outlined in
Frontiers of Justice (2007). I argue that an account of analogous justice between humans and animals
can generate real and robust obligations towards animals. I first show how Aquinas’s treatment of
nonhuman animals in the questions on law evince a wider, shared community between humans and
animals by which we see animals and humans as equally under divine providence. I then argue that
while Aquinas’s definition of justice excludes animals in its proper sense, his treatment of animals (or
irrational creatures) in questions such as those on theft and charity prove that there is room to
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understand at least an analogous or metaphorical sense by which we can see them as recipients of
justice. Finally, I examine Nussbaum’s own account and illustrate key similarities between her view and
that of Aquinas.
The doctrine of double effect (DDE) can have two different functions, permissive and restrictive.
According to the first function, agents are exculpated from the negative consequences of their actions,
consequences that would be deemed illicit were they intentionally chosen. According to the second,
agents are reminded that they are responsible, albeit in a distinctive manner, for the foreseeable
damages that flow from their chosen actions. Aquinas has standardly been credited with a permissive
version of DDE. I argue by contrast (drawing on the treatment of this issue in my Thomas Aquinas on
War and Peace, Cambridge University Press, 2017) that the permissive version results from a misreading
of Sum. theol. II-II, q. 64, a. 7. Other texts in the same work indicate that he embraced a restrictive
version of DDE.
Session 8: Mereology
The burgeoning analytic literature on the topic of “social ontology”—that is, the properly ontological
status of “social” phenomena such as institutions, firms and nation-states—has yielded some promising
avenues of research for economists interested in the economic agency of groups as opposed to
individual persons. Following M.D. Ryall, in this paper I offer a preliminary sketch of an ontology of the
firm inspired by the work of Bernard Lonergan and the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition.
“Property Characterization and the Status of Accidental Unities in Aquinas: A Response to Brower”
Lindsay K. Cleveland, Baylor University
After arguing that Aquinas’s hylomorphism is usefully characterized as a unique type of substratum
theory, Jeffrey Brower argues that Aquinas’s hylomorphic account of change entails a distinction
between property possession and property characterization. Given that and Brower’s assumption that
Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds are material substances and accidental unities, it
follows that material substances are not characterized by the accidents they possess. In order to avoid
that counterintuitive consequence, Brower stipulates a form of derivative property characterization and
a numerical sameness without identity relation, which together enable him to affirm that material
substances are derivatively characterized by the accidents they possess. I argue that, by affirming a
plausible alternative to Brower’s account of Aquinas’s fundamental hylomorphic compounds, we can
maintain that accidents characterize material substances in the primary sense without having to affirm
the real existence of accidental unities or Brower’s objectionable numerical sameness without identity
relation. Then I show that my alternative is compatible with Aquinas’s account of accidental change and
the passages from Aquinas’s works that Brower gives to support his view.
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