The Armchair Thomist

     Dr. Alexander Pruss is a prolific contemporary Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who has become immensely influential with his work on infinity, causation, existence, time, modality, philosophy of religion, etc. He is arguably best known for his defense(s) of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and various forms of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. He also covers an array of philosophical issues on his blog which will be the subject of this post. In his article, " Good-bye, (Aristotelian) matter ", Pruss offers some brief critiques of the Aristotelian notion of matter which I believe fall short, so my aim for this post will be to pose my concerns with the content of his article. Given the brief and somewhat casual nature of Pruss's critiques, it is very possible that my responses will be disproportionately technical and critical, but that is only because I want to give as quality of a reply as I can.      Firstly, Pruss begins the art...

     The Liar's paradox is a well known conundrum to anyone with a general knowledge of philosophical topics. You are probably already familiar with the paradox and may not even realize it. Take the proposition, "this sentence is a lie." If this proposition is true, then it is true that it is a lie, which makes it false; yet, if this proposition is false, then it is true because it is true that the proposition is false, etc. The truth of this proposition entails its falsity and its falsity entails its truth, meaning that it is both true and false simultaneously. The point of the paradox is to call into question the validity of the Law of Noncontradiction, a classical law of thought which states that a proposition cannot be both true and false in the same sense or at the same time, by providing an exception to it. But is this truly an exception?       I contend that it is not. There are two responses to the paradox that I am familiar with. One is to say...