[SydPhil] SHAPE philosophy talk, USYD Fri March 7, 10.30am

[David Macarthur]

Next week’s SHAPE philosophy seminar will be presented by Jeremy Bell (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago).

The title of his talk is: "Aquinas on Sensation"

Precis:
Since the 1960s there have been sporadic pleas for analytic philosophers to take seriously Aquinas' account of intellect, but his account of sensation has found few defenders. John Haldane, a recent champion of Thomism in philosophy of mind, describes this account as 'self-contradictory'. Yet Aquinas' account of intellect presupposes his account of sensation. No authentically Thomist theory of mind can simply jettison or disregard the latter. In this paper I outline its general principles and what I take to be their motivation. I seek to show that Aquinas' well-known affirmation, following Aristotle, of the 'identity' of percipient and perceived can and should be taken literally. I also argue, against Robert Pasnau and others, that Aquinas' account of sensation is in no sense a materialist one and, against Haldane, that its seemingly incongruous combination of materialist and immaterialist elements does not render it self-contradictory.

Time: Fri March 7, 10.30am

Place: Muniment Room, S401 – under the central clock tower, level 1, Main Quad, The University of Sydney.

David

Dr. David Macarthur | Senior Lecturer & UG Coordinator
Philosophy Department | SOPHI
University of Sydney, 2006 | Australia
Ph: +61-2-9351-3193
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/philos/staff/profiles/dmacarthur.shtml




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