Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, 2010
Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indi... more Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indicates realignment with a long tradition in the history of philosophy by Aristotle, medieval scholastics, Kant, Husserl, and Ryle. There is much to recommend an approach to metaphysics that includes categorial investigations, not the least of which is the intuitively plausible and perennial notion that things with which we are acquainted ought to be understood as having commonalities among them. Metaphysics has been conceived as a discipline that, among other things, seeks to investigate common features of reality, thought, or language. It seeks to establish such features tout court in such a way that any entity whatsoever will either have a general feature in common with other entities or will itself be the category through which these entities are understood in common. In addition, it is an oft-believed metaphysical view that some such features are presupposed by any correct understanding of the less general features under which entities are investigated or known. 3 For example, although biologists mapping the human genome consider their subject matter in relation to an organism, they presuppose that their subject of investigation is individual. But individuality is a feature common to entities that is not considered by biologists. In this context, an aim of metaphysics would be to determine whether "individuality" is a general feature of entities, or, if it is not, how it can be accounted for by other more general features.
This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both... more This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both meaning and being. I disagree with Ralph McInerny's understanding of how things are named through concepts and argue that McInerny's account does not allow for the thing represented by the name to be known in itself. In his understanding of analogy, only ideas of things may be known. This results in a wholesale inability to name things at all and thereby forces McInerny to relegate naming to a purely logical concern. As a consequence, for McInerny, since naming becomes only a logical concern, being itself cannot be known as analogous according to being and meaning since naming only involves the naming of ideas, not of things.
This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed... more This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed account of Freud's understanding of psychical structure and his deterministic psycho-biological presuppositions, Lonergan's understanding of psychical structure in relation to patterns of experience is discussed. As opposed to Freud's theory, which is based on an imaginative synthesis of the classical laws of natural science, Lonergan considers psychical and organic function as concretely integrated in human functionality according to probabilistic schemes of recurrence. Consequently, Lonergan offers a theory of the psychological problems of repression and inhibition not primarily as functions of subverted organic desires, but more properly according to the functioning of intellectual bias. Lonergan thereby provides a more comprehensive understanding of the unity of the human self at the psychical level.
ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cl... more ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cloth, $45.00--The purpose of this targeted work is to examine a phenomenological approach to epistemology, and specifically, to address the relation between "reality," "phenomena" and "appearance" in light of the enduring question of how it is possible to grasp reality as such. Rockmore argues that phenomenology, broadly conceived, extends beyond Husserl importantly back to Kant. He argues that Husserl's, Heidegger's, and Merleau-Ponty's so-called nonconstructivist approaches to phenomenology fail to solve this problem and suggests that Kant's "constructivist strategy" is more effective in addressing it. The major view espoused in nonconstructivist phenomenological accounts is that reality is knowable because it appears. Constructivism--the view "that a minimal conditional of knowledge is that the cognitive subject must 'con...
Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, 2010
Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indi... more Categories have become a salient topic in contemporary metaphysics. 2 Such an invigorization indicates realignment with a long tradition in the history of philosophy by Aristotle, medieval scholastics, Kant, Husserl, and Ryle. There is much to recommend an approach to metaphysics that includes categorial investigations, not the least of which is the intuitively plausible and perennial notion that things with which we are acquainted ought to be understood as having commonalities among them. Metaphysics has been conceived as a discipline that, among other things, seeks to investigate common features of reality, thought, or language. It seeks to establish such features tout court in such a way that any entity whatsoever will either have a general feature in common with other entities or will itself be the category through which these entities are understood in common. In addition, it is an oft-believed metaphysical view that some such features are presupposed by any correct understanding of the less general features under which entities are investigated or known. 3 For example, although biologists mapping the human genome consider their subject matter in relation to an organism, they presuppose that their subject of investigation is individual. But individuality is a feature common to entities that is not considered by biologists. In this context, an aim of metaphysics would be to determine whether "individuality" is a general feature of entities, or, if it is not, how it can be accounted for by other more general features.
This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both... more This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both meaning and being. I disagree with Ralph McInerny's understanding of how things are named through concepts and argue that McInerny's account does not allow for the thing represented by the name to be known in itself. In his understanding of analogy, only ideas of things may be known. This results in a wholesale inability to name things at all and thereby forces McInerny to relegate naming to a purely logical concern. As a consequence, for McInerny, since naming becomes only a logical concern, being itself cannot be known as analogous according to being and meaning since naming only involves the naming of ideas, not of things.
This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed... more This article compares the accounts of psychical unity in Freud and Lonergan. Following a detailed account of Freud's understanding of psychical structure and his deterministic psycho-biological presuppositions, Lonergan's understanding of psychical structure in relation to patterns of experience is discussed. As opposed to Freud's theory, which is based on an imaginative synthesis of the classical laws of natural science, Lonergan considers psychical and organic function as concretely integrated in human functionality according to probabilistic schemes of recurrence. Consequently, Lonergan offers a theory of the psychological problems of repression and inhibition not primarily as functions of subverted organic desires, but more properly according to the functioning of intellectual bias. Lonergan thereby provides a more comprehensive understanding of the unity of the human self at the psychical level.
ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cl... more ROCKMORE, Tom. Kant and Phenomenology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. 258 pp. Cloth, $45.00--The purpose of this targeted work is to examine a phenomenological approach to epistemology, and specifically, to address the relation between "reality," "phenomena" and "appearance" in light of the enduring question of how it is possible to grasp reality as such. Rockmore argues that phenomenology, broadly conceived, extends beyond Husserl importantly back to Kant. He argues that Husserl's, Heidegger's, and Merleau-Ponty's so-called nonconstructivist approaches to phenomenology fail to solve this problem and suggests that Kant's "constructivist strategy" is more effective in addressing it. The major view espoused in nonconstructivist phenomenological accounts is that reality is knowable because it appears. Constructivism--the view "that a minimal conditional of knowledge is that the cognitive subject must 'con...
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