Aquinas and Anscombe on connaturality and moral knowledge

Open access publishing facilitated by Australian Catholic University, as part of the Wiley - Australian Catholic University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.The idea of ‘connatural knowledge’ is attributed to Aquinas on the basis of passages in which he distinguishes between scientific and affective experiential knowledge of religious and moral truths. In a series of encyclicals beginning with Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris, popes have celebrated and commended Aquinas as the supreme guide in philosophy and theology and in some of these cited his discovery of connatural knowledge. The course and context of his ‘elevation’ are explored before proceeding to a discussion of moral knowledge in which different forms of non-theoretical cognition are identified. This leads to an examination of work by Elizabeth Anscombe on the factuality of ethical judgement and connaturality. Aquinas and Anscombe offer important insights but more work remains to be done. Moral knowledge is a many-faceted thing. More accurately, it is not one thing but many things analogously related both by their modes and by their objects.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

It's Déjà vu all over again

The latest sex abuse scandal in the American Catholic Church involving Cardinal McCarrick is compared with that of 2002 in the archdiocese of Boston, and that of 2012 involving Cardinal O'Brien of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Attention is given to aspects of the latter in part because of the privileged perspective of the author. Thereafter, sociological and other reasons are proposed as to why the Catholic priesthood has been afflicted with cases of sexual abuse and sexual impropriety. The issue is considered of the genesis of homosexuality, and apriori assumptions are rejected taking it instead to be an empirical question. There is analysis of the common distinction between (homosexual) orientation and activity, and of its relevance to the issue of admission to seminary formation. Noting that Vatican documents and statements do not refer to ‘orientation’ but to ‘deep‐seated homosexual tendencies’ (tendenze omosessuali profondamente) these notions are related to those of disposition and activity, and it is argued that the important distinction is between orientation and the rest. Finally, it is noted that both traditional and progressive Catholics are often given to idolatry about the Church and to Pelagianism about their faith and practice.PostprintPeer reviewe

ACPQ Special Issue on Elizabeth Anscombe : Editor's Introduction

Introduction to Special Issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly on The Philosophy of Elizabeth AnscombePostprintNon peer reviewe

Virtuous leadership : ambiguities, challenges, and precedents

Virtuous leadership is the focus of a growing body of academic literature but is little discussed by contemporary philosophers. Current treatments tend to over-generalisation: assimilating diverse features to a few broad categories and applying simplified ethical theories. This essay argues that virtue and character education need to be keyed to specific activities, that “virtuous leadership” is in danger of being confused with extrinsic activism, and that the history of ethics in health care provides an instructive example of thinking ethically about practice. Questions commonly posed in the literature—What specific virtues are required for leadership? How may these be formed?—are unduly simple and often rest on faulty assumptions about the nature of leadership and of the structure of virtuous action. Philosophers engaged in advising professionals about the virtues of leadership would do well to consider how the relevant points apply to their own practice.Peer reviewe

Ethics, Aesthetics and Practical Philosophy

The development of interest among academic philosophers in the aesthetics of everyday life is somewhat analogous to the broader development in moral philosophy of ‘applied’ or practical ethics. This fact is sometimes mentioned but rarely examined and it may be useful, therefore, explore something of the course and causes of these two developments, in part better to understand them, but also to note blindspots and limitations in certain ways of thinking. In each case (though in different ways) these limitations are related to ignorance of past theory and practice. Exploring the parallels will also serve as a basis for suggesting how the two lines may now be brought together in a form of practical philosophy.PostprintNon peer reviewe

Challenges and opportunities surrounding Catholic education

Catholic education faces a number of serious challenges including cultural and political disrespect for, and hostility towards religion in general and Catholicism in particular, and lack of knowledge of, and commitment to, Catholic beliefs and values among Catholic educational administrators, school managers, teachers, and other staff, as well as the diminishing percentage of even nominally Catholic staff. I set these matters within the context of broader challenges surrounding Catholic education, deriving from three cultural movements: the reformation, the emergence of liberalism, and the scientific revolution, which undermined the synthesis of scripture, theology, and speculative and practical philosophy achieved in the high middle-ages. I propose in response a creative critique showing that what is of authentic value in modernity can be accommodated within the traditional synthesis. I also connect that tradition with strands of eastern philosophy suggesting that the movement of people, ideas, and traditions from Eastern cultures into historically Western societies provides an opportunity for further synthesis of a wisdom-based approach to education.Peer reviewe

Incompressible states of negatively charged magneto-excitons

We study the system of up to four negatively charged magneto-excitons (X-'s) in the spherical geometry, using the exact-diagonalization techniques. At low energies, X-'s are bound and behave like charged particles without internal dynamics. The pseudopotential describing X-:X- scattering is almost identical to that of electrons and the low-lying few X- states correspond to the few-electron states. The total angular momentum of the ground state depends on the effective filling factor nu and vanishes at its special values. The analogs to the Laughlin nu=1/3 state and the Jain nu=2/5 state of electrons are found. The X- system is predicted to exhibit the fractional quantum Hall effect.Comment: RevTeX + 2 EPS figures formatted in the text with epsf.sty; to appear in Physica

Residual interactions and correlations among Laughlin quasiparticles: Novel hierarchy states

The residual interactions between Laughlin quasiparticles can be obtained from exact numerical diagonalization studies of small systems. The pseudopotentials V_QP(R)$ describing the energy of interaction of QE's (or QH's) as a function of their "relative angular momentum" R cannot support Laughlin correlations at certain QP filling factors (e.g., nu_QE}=1/3 and nu_QH=1/5). Because of this the novel condensed quantum fluid states observed at nu=4/11, 4/13 and other filling fractions cannot possibly be spin polarized Laughlin correlated QP states of the composite Fermion hierarchy. Pairing of the QP's clearly must occur, but the exact nature of the incompressible ground states is not completely clear.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for Solid State Commu