AMA submission deadline
Gavin T. Colvert
Dear Colleagues,
The extended deadline for submission of conference proposals for the
2011 AMA meeting is approaching. Please visit the conference web site
by JULY 22, 2011 at http://maritain.veritasprima.org in order to make
your submission for the conference.
This year’s conference theme is “Ransoming the Time: Human Nature,
Earthly Destiny, and Christian Wisdom,” which is a reference to
Jacques Maritain’s 1941 book with the same title. While papers may be
on any topic of philosophical merit, conference participants are
encouraged to examine this book and reflect on the vast range of
topics indicated by the titles of the essays in it.
Regards,
Gavin Colvert
Association VP
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Gavin T. Colvert
Director of the Ecumenical Institute
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Philosophy
Assumption College
500 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA 01609
508-767-7027
gcol...@assumption.edu
John C. Cahalan (Jack)
Dear Colleague:
Resources for Modern Aristotelian Philosophy has a new posting: "Why Change Needs an Efficient Cause: How Aristotle Could Refute Hume".
This is the first chapter of a projected e-book, A RE-introduction to Philosophy: Why Post-Fregean Methods Have Not Reduced Philosophic Disagreement and Paradox. To see the connection between the topics of the book and the first chapter, please read the 4-page "Introduction" to the book, also just posted.
• Go to www.foraristotelians.info
• Click on "Why Post-Fregean Methods Have Not Reduced Philosophic Disagreement and Paradox".
• Click on "Introduction" and go to page 4.
• Click on "Why Change Needs an Efficient Cause: How Aristotle Could Refute Hume".
Abstract
Hume said that the otherness of cause and effect makes it epistemically necessary that dependence on an efficient cause cannot be epistemically necessary; for that otherness prevents the negation of dependence on a cause from being contradictory. My critique of Hume is distinguished from others by starting from the grasp of a kind of dependence other than on an agent. A motion newly occurring to an already existing subject is caused by—is nonidentical with and cannot exist without—its subject, though not by efficient causality. Both philosophic tradition and ordinary language use “cause” in a sense broad enough to cover the subject and the agent of change. Seeing that a change occurring to what is other than itself needs a cause of some kind refutes Hume’s argument from otherness. (To my knowledge, this is the only reply to Hume based on Aquinas’ (De Pot., 5.1) insight, which I was pleased to learn about later, that “The necessity of an effect’s dependence on its cause is obvious in the case of . . . ‘material’ causes.”) The question is no longer whether a change has any cause but whether a previously unchanging subject can be a change’s sole cause. I show that, if the sole cause is supposed to be the subject as only potentially changing, the change is caused and has no cause. (I was pleased to learn later that Yves Simon (1969, 131-134) had said “The need for the efficient cause arises when the mind recognizes the insufficiency of explanation by the material cause. . . . If the only origin of being in act is being in potentiality, the origin of that addition of reality which distinguishes being in act from being in potentiality is nothing.” But Simon did not use this to explain Hume’s error.) And if the sole cause is supposed to be the subject as actually changing, the change unavoidably becomes a cause of itself. Even Hume (Treatise, 1, 3, 3) saw that something’s having nothing for a cause or being a cause of itself is contradictory, if dependence on some cause is established first.
Permission is granted to download and copy this material.
Sorry if this is a duplicate. I am using multiple lists.
All the best,
Jack
John C. Cahalan, Ph.D.
23 Pilgrim Circle, #E
Methuen, MA 01844