History of Philosophy Commons^™

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of …

The Barmen Declaration And The American Church: A Warning And Guidance From History, Johnny Davis

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

The Barmen Declaration serves as a great example that the American Church should heed.[1] The American Church faces a hostile secular culture and a government that is increasingly statist and anti-Christian. The state has become an idol in an American culture that rejects truth and righteousness. A bold stance for truth and Christ is required by scripture and is the key to transforming the culture and saving the American Republic.

Marin Mersenne And Pierre Gassendi As Descartes’ Questioners, Alejandra Velázquez Zaragoza, Leonel Toledo Marín

Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events

In the following pages, we will explore the proximity of Marin Mersenne and Pierre Gassendi’s arguments against Descartes’ "Meditations." We will study how, in some of their objections, both Mersenne and Gassendi adopted a nominalist and an empiricist view regarding central topics in Cartesian epistemology, such as the idea of God, and the origin and classification of ideas in the mind. We propose that the assessment of the confrontation between the two objectors and Descartes may provide us a better picture of the complex intellectual debates that took place at the very beginnings of modern philosophy.

Dreams And Ideas: Baxter On Berkeley, Melissa Frankel

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In this paper I look at a particular narrative, famously articulated by Reid, that holds that Descartes’s ‘Way of Ideas’ leads inevitably to Berkeley’s immaterialism. In the service of examining this narrative more closely, I consider Andrew Baxter’s early 18^th century criticisms of Berkeley, and especially Baxter’s view that immaterialism begins with a dream hypothesis and is therefore self-undermining. I suggest that a careful consideration of Baxter’s criticism(s) is illuminating in a number of ways: in so far as it anticipates future criticisms of and engagements with Berkeleyan immaterialism, in so far as it helps to reveal the actual …

Lunch Break!, Bon Appetit

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No abstract provided.

Are Animal Machines? Gómez Pereira And Descartes On Animal Minds, Enrique Chávez-Arvizo

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Forty two years before Descartes’ birth, in his Antoniana Margarita (Medina del Campo, 1554), Spanish physician and philosopher Gómez Pereira explicitly argues the following assertions:

(1) Animals lack reason

(2) Animals lack understanding

(3) Animals do not think

(4) Animals cannot feel (Bruta non sentire)

(5) Animals cannot see as we do

(6) Animals are machines

(7) Animals have no rational soul

(8) Animals have no indivisible soul

(9) Animals have no language

The above claims on animal automatism are commonly thought to have originated with Descartes. In this paper I will expound Gómez Pereira’s arguments, contra the School and …

Kant, Cicero, And The Stoic Doctrine Of The Highest Good, Corey Dyck

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In this presentation I consider the context for Kant's discussion of the highest good in the Dialectic of the second Critique. I begin by showing how his original account of the highest good in the Canon of the first Critique addresses deficiencies in ancient accounts, particularly in the Stoic identification of virtue and happiness. I then consider the defense of the Stoic conception in Christian Garve's influential translation and commentary on Cicero's De officiis in 1783. It is, I contend, this account, which engages with Kant's discussion in the Canon at a number of junctures, that spurs Kant's decision …

Introduction, Benjamin Hill, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

On The Ancient Roots Of Berkeley Immaterialist Idealism, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

It's Alive: Margaret Cavendish On Matter, Order, And God, Marleen Rozemond

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Margaret Cavendish is widely regarded as a vitalist: she considers all matter as alive, including an endowment with mental capacities, and rejects dualism. She rejects two important motives for dualism in the period. She agrees with her Cambridge Platonist contemporaries, More and Cudworth (and many others) that the order in nature ultimately comes from God’s plans. But she rejects their view that matter can’t execute God’s commands and that their execution requires immaterial entities. For Cavendish matter is shot through with rationality and the power to implement plans. This conception of matter comes with an utter rejection of the other …

Descartes And Our Philosophies, Juan Carlos Moreno Romo

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We propose to show that, although we think of Descartes as a "modern Parmenides" or as the "father of Modernity", otherwise for excellent reasons, this condition is at least as ambiguous as different are the cultures or societies that arose from the breakdown of Christianity. Where the Protestant Reformation triumphed, the dominant conception of philosophy is manifestly anticartesian, although they recognize, curiously, a debt to Cartesian philosophy; for example, we recognize this due in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Neither empiricist nor rationalist, neither analytical nor continental, nor national or identitarian either, more than a "French", "European" or "Western" philosopher, Descartes would …

Leibniz’S Analysis Of Change: Vague States, Physical Continuity, And The Calculus, Richard Arthur

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One of the most puzzling features of Leibniz’s deep metaphysics is the apparent contradiction between his claims (1) that the law of continuity holds everywhere, so that in particular, change is continuous in every monad, and (2) that “changes are not really continuous,” since successive states contradict one another. In this paper I try to show in what sense these claims can be understood as compatible. My analysis depends crucially on Leibniz’s idea that enduring states are “vague,” and abstract away from further changes occurring within them at a higher resolution—consistently with his famous doctrine of "petites perceptions." As Leibniz …

Spinoza On Language, Luis Ramos-Alarcón

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Some scholars have understood that Spinoza’s extreme rationalism, nominalism, conventionalism, and rejection of a semantic theory of truth make his philosophy incapable to use language for philosophical and scientific purposes; insofar he considered language a source of inadequate knowledge, falsity, and error. Thus Spinoza finds contradiction in his inevitable use of language to express his philosophy. This paper has four aims: first, propose an explanation on why language is inadequate knowledge for Spinoza; second, present differences between inadequacy, falsity, and error in language; third, argue on the Spinozian use of the geometrical method as a solution for the adequate use …

Introduction, Benjamin Hill, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

Berkeley On Infinite Divisibility, David Mwakima

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Berkeley, arguing against Barrow, claims that the infinite divisibility of finite lines is neither an axiom nor a theorem in Euclid The Thirteen Books of The Elements. Instead, he suggests that it is rooted in ancient prejudice. In this paper, I attempt to substantiate Berkeley’s claims by looking carefully at the history and practice of ancient geometry as a first step towards understanding Berkeley’s mathematical atomism.

Berkeley On Perceptual Discrimination Of Physical Objects, Keota Fields

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Commentators are divided over whether Berkeley holds that physical objects are immediately perceived by sense. As I read Berkeley, discrimination is necessary for perceiving physical objects by sense. Berkeley says that discrimination requires perceiving motion. Since motions can only be mediately perceived according to Berkeley, physical objects can only be mediately perceived by sense. I defend this reading against the following objections. First, that perception of physical objects is non-conceptual. Second, that physical objects are divinely instituted collections of ideas rather than psychologically associated collections of ideas. Third, that some physical objects are small enough to be immediately perceptually discriminated …

Browne’S Critique Of Religious Propositions In Berkeley: A Reply To Pearce, Benjamin Formanek

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No abstract provided.

Does Berkeley Anthropomorphize God, Kenneth Pearce

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Berkeley occasionally says that we use analogy in thinking and speaking of God (Alc, §4.21). However, the scholarly consensus is that Berkeley rejects the traditional doctrine of divine analogy and holds instead that words like ‘wise’ apply to God in precisely the same way as they apply to Socrates. The difference is only a matter of degree (Daniel 2011; Curtin 2014; Pearce 2018; Fasko 2018). Univocal theories of the divine attributes have historically been charged with anthropomorphism—that is, with imagining God to be too similar to human beings (see Maimonides, Guide, ch. 1.1). Can Berkeley fairly be charged with anthropomorphizing …

Day 3 Schedule, Benjamin Hill

Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events

No abstract provided.

Thomas Reid And The Priority Thesis: A Defence Against Turri, Benjamin Formanek, Lewis Powell

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No abstract provided.

What Makes Hume An External World Skeptic?, Graham Clay, David Landy, Nathan Rockwood

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What would it take for Hume to be an external world skeptic? Is Hume's position on knowledge sufficient to force him to deny that we can acquire knowledge of (non-logical) propositions about the external world? After all, Hume is extremely restrictive about what can be known because he requires knowledge to be immune to error. In this paper, I will argue that if Hume were a skeptic, then he must also deny a particular kind of view about what is immediately present to the mind. I will argue that direct realisms—views that maintain that mind-independent (i.e. ontologically distinct) things are …

Cancelled - Berkeley's A Priori Argument For God's Exstence, Stephen H. Daniel, Alberto Luis Lopez

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Berkeley’s appeal to a posteriori arguments for God’s existence supports belief only in a God who is finite. But by appealing to an a priori argument for God’s existence, Berkeley emphasizes God’s infinity. In this latter argument, God is not the efficient cause of particular finite things in the world, for such an explanation does not provide a justification or rationale for why the totality of finite things would exist in the first place. Instead, God is understood as the creator of the total unity of all there is, the whole of creation. In this a priori argument, we should …

Kant’S Long Shadow On The Interpretation Of Swedenborg, Hasse Hämäläinen, Alin Varciu

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Among the readers of Swedenborg, the Swedish thinker’s ‘theory of correspondences’ is often interpreted as treating empirical realities as only imperfect manifestations of spiritual realities (e.g. Lamm 1915, Benz 1948, Beiser 2002). This interpretation that ascribes (Platonic) idealism to Swedenborg was originally proposed by Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766). Although Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s theory, he considers it no inferior to the theories of Leibniz and Wolf, which can entice a reader of Swedenborg to take Kant’s interpretation at face value: even if Kant did not agree with Swedenborg, at least he took him to be on par …

Cavendish And Berkeley On Inconceivability And Impossibility, Peter West, Colin Chamberlain

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In this paper, I compare Margaret Cavendish’s argument for the view that colours of objects are inseparable from their ‘physical’ qualities (such as size and shape) with George Berkeley’s argument for the view that secondary qualities of objects (such as colours, tastes, and sounds) are inseparable from their primary qualities (such as size and shape). By reconstructing their respective arguments, I show that both thinkers rely on the ‘inconceivability principle’: the claim that inconceivability entails impossibility. That is, both premise their arguments on the claim that it is impossible to conceive of an object that has size and shape but …

Day 2 Schedule, Benjamin Hill

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No abstract provided.

The Middle Standpoint In Spinoza’S Ethics, Raphael Krut-Landau, Kristin Primus

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No abstract provided.

Spinoza’S Formal Essence, Christopher Martin

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Spinoza stipulates in E2def2, his definition of the essence of a thing, that the essence of each particular can neither exist nor, even, be conceived, except alongside its particular. Yet a mere eight propositions later states that God maintains an idea of the essence of nonactual particulars “in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things are contained in God’s attributes” (E2p8). While there are known interpretive controversies with each of these claims, I argue that according to E2def2, essences of particulars can only be and can only be conceived alongside the actual existence of their particular, …

Informal Discussion, Benjamin Hill

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“Do your students struggle with Spinoza’s geometric exposition, and if so, how do you get them past it?”

Malebranche’S Alleged Idealism, Fabio Malfara, Dylan Flint

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Over the span of eleven years (1683-1694), Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld, two prominent sympathizers of the Cartesian tradition, engaged in a rigorous debate. In his initial set of criticisms, Arnauld objects that a natural consequence of Malebranche’s theory of ideas is idealism.1 This charge of idealism has puzzled scholars: why did Arnauld believe this? Han Adriaenssen2 has convincingly argued that Arnauld’s charge of idealism is founded on the representationality of Malebranchean ideas. According to Arnauld, ideas represent for Malebranche in much the same way that portraits do—by inciting a perceiver to form a conception of whatever they pertain to. …

Informal Discussion, Benjamin Hill

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“Why is it important that philosophers study the history of philosophy and why should we continue to teach it? Alt formulation: Why should programs continue to have history of philosophy courses as degree requirements?”