Gyula Klima

In this paper, I will argue for the consistency of Aquinas’ conception, according to which the human soul, uniquely in God’s creation, is both the inherent, material, substantial form of the human body, and the subsistent immaterial substance underlying the immaterial operations of its immaterial, rational powers, namely, intellect and will. In this discussion, I will point out that typical challenges to Aquinas’ conception usually rely on semantic or ontological assumptions that can plausibly be denied in Aquinas’ own conceptual framework. Since the issue of consistency merely assumes the less than self-evident claim of the immateriality of the human intellect, I will also provide a brief sketch of what I take to be Aquinas’ most promising proof of this claim.

Klima, G. (2008) “The “Grammar” of ‘God’ and ‘Being’:
Making Sense of Talking about the One True God in
Different Metaphysical Traditions”,
in D. Z. Phillips (ed.), Whose God? Which Tradition?
Ashgate Publishing Company: Aldershot, pp. 53-77.

In this paper, I will argue that in some
important respects Buridan’s positions in his psychology are closer to
Aquinas’ than to Ockham’s, indeed, possibly at the expense of the consistency
of his own doctrine, even if it was possibly devised to avoid
some of the problems of Ockham’s account.
In order to make this argument, I will first sketch Aquinas’ doctrine
of intentionality and mental representation. Next, I will contrast it with
Ockham’s radically different doctrine, pointing out some of the difficulties
that may have motivated Buridan’s departure from Ockham.
Finally, I will call attention to those points of Buridan’s doctrine in
which he seems to depart from Ockham and move in the direction of
Aquinas, briefly evaluating the consistency of the resulting doctrine.

1. The limitations of Aristotelian syllogistic, and the need for non-syllogistic consequences Medieval theories of consequences are theories of logical validity, providing tools to judge the correctness of various forms of reasoning. Although Aristotelian syllogistic was regarded as the primary tool for achieving this, the limitations of syllogistic with regard to valid non-syllogistic forms of reasoning, as well as the limitations of formal deductive systems in detecting fallacious forms of reasoning in general, naturally provided the theoretical motivation for its supplementation with theories dealing with non-syllogistic, non-deductive, as well as fallacious inferences. We can easily produce deductively valid forms of inference that are clearly not syllogistic, as in propositional logic or in relational reasoning, or even other types of sound reasoning that are not strictly deductively valid, such as enthymemes, probabilistic arguments, and inductive reasoning, while we can just as easily provide examples of inferences that appear to be legitimate instances of syllogistic forms, yet are clearly fallacious (say, because of equivocation). For Aristotle himself, this sort of supplementation of his syllogistic was provided mostly in terms of the doctrine of " immediate inferences " 1 in his On Interpretation, various types of non-syllogistic or even non-deductive inferences in the Topics, and the doctrine of logical fallacies, in his On Sophistical Refutations. Taking their cue primarily from Aristotle (but drawing on Cicero, Boethius, and others as well), medieval logicians worked out in systematic detail various theories of non-syllogistic inferences, sometimes as supplementations of Aristotelian syllogistic, sometimes as merely useful devices taken to be reducible to syllogistic, and sometimes as more comprehensive theories of valid inference, containing syllogistic as a special, and important, case. 2. A brief survey of historical sources Accordingly, the characteristically medieval theories of non-syllogistic inferences were originally inspired by Aristotle's logical works other than his Analytics. Aristotle's relevant ideas were handed down to medieval thinkers by Boethius' translations of and commentaries on Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories and Peri Hermeneias, along with Boethius' own logical works, the most relevant to the development of consequences being his De Hypotheticis Syllogismis and De Topicis Differentiis. As Christopher Martin has convincingly argued, it was not until Abelard's " discovery of propositionality " , that is, the applicability of truth-functional logical operators (in particular, propositional negation and conjunction) to propositions of any complexity, that medieval logicians found the conceptual resources to develop what we would recognize as propositional logic. (Martin, 2009 and 2012) However, Abelard's own project, retaining certain elements of Boethius' non-truth-functional treatment of conditionals, was proven to be inconsistent by 1 In this chapter, I will use this phrase broadly, to refer to medieval doctrines covering logical relations between two categorical propositions sharing both of their terms, viz the doctrine of the Square of Opposition and its expansions as well as the doctrine of conversions.

In this paper, I am going to argue that Aquinas’ conception of the ontological status of the human soul involves one of his typical “balancing acts” that his admirers love him for and his detractors hate him for. Myself, being a humble admirer of Aquinas, will attempt to show that Aquinas is successful in balancing the human soul on what he construes as a razor-sharp line separating the realms of matter and pure spirit, running right across our very being. Putting the point less figuratively, I will argue for the consistency of Aquinas’ conception, according to which the human soul, uniquely in God’s creation, is both the inherent, material, substantial form of the human body, and the subsistent immaterial substance underlying the immaterial operations of its immaterial, rational powers, namely, intellect and will. But putting the point this way, the case may appear hopeless. How can one and the same entity be both material and immaterial, both inherent in matter and a subsistent, immaterial form?

A " cosmological argument " is one that argues from the obvious existence of something other than God for the existence of God as its first efficient cause. This sort of reasoning can be vitiated by two main types of objection. The first, which I will refer to as the " self-sufficiency objection " , argues that the obvious existence of the thing the cosmological argument refers to does not need an explanation in terms of an efficient cause: it just exists, and there is no need for an efficient cause for its existence (see for instance the objections to Aquinas' First Way from the Newtonian idea of inertial motion). The second type of objection, which I will refer to as the " infinite regress objection " , argues that even if the obvious existence of the thing in question does need an efficient cause to sustain it, that cause need not be God, but may be an entity other than God, which in turn can also be caused by something other than God, and so on, to infinity, without ever needing a First Cause, which one might plausibly identify with God. In this paper, I will argue that Aquinas' thesis of the real distinction of creatures and the identity thereof in God plausibly takes care of both types of objections, provided we have a proper understanding both of the thesis itself, and its import on the notion of efficient causality. So, I will start the discussion with the thesis of real distinction, in particular, with Aquinas' famous argument for it in his De Ente et Essentia, and then I will consider how this thesis is " cashed out " in the causal proof for the existence of God in the same passage.

This chapter reviews Aquinas’ reception in contemporary metaphysics as it is practiced today in the analytic tradition, focusing on issues that make this reception problematic. I identify the main trouble spots based on the historical development of the analytic tradition. The discussion will target those major conceptual hurdles inherent in the analytic tradition that Aquinas’ genuine reception faces regarding his metaphysical notions of being and essence and his conception of the hylomorphic composition of material substances. This strategy will allow me to introduce a hopefully “analytically acceptable” sketch of the metaphysical foundations of Aquinas’ unique position on the ontological status of the human intellective soul, which places it on a razor-thin borderline between the material and purely spiritual realms of reality, running right across our very being. I conclude with a summary of the conceptual pre-requisites of a genuine and full reception of Aquinas’ thought in contemporary metaphysical discourse.

In this paper, I will primarily argue for the consistency of Aquinas' conception, according to which the human soul, uniquely in God's creation, is both the inherent, material, substantial form of the human body, and the subsistent immaterial substance underlying the immaterial operations of its immaterial, rational powers, namely, intellect and will. In this discussion, I will point out that typical challenges to Aquinas' conception usually rely on semantic or ontological assumptions that can plausibly be denied in Aquinas' own conceptual framework. Since the issue of consistency merely assumes the less than self-evident claim of the immateriality of the human intellect, I will also provide a brief sketch of what I take to be Aquinas' most promising proof of this claim.

The framework for this discussion is what we usually refer to as Aristotle’s “semantic triangle”, describing the relationships between words, thoughts and things, the things in question being the objects of our thoughts conveyed by our words. Obviously, however, our individual words can have the function of conveying our thoughts only insofar as they are the building blocks of a human language. So, we need to expand our investigations from the single words of a language and their relations to our thoughts and their objects to the relationships between human languages, human thoughts, and the possible objects of human thoughts in general.