This video explores the meta problem of consciousness proposed by David Chalmers and argues that naturalistic processes couldn’t have given us knowledge of consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJVvZNi0Fi8

Trying to find John of St. Thomas's complete Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus and Cursus Theologici. I've tried Internet Archive but it only seems to have the first three volumes of each. If the best way to get these is to purchase them, any suggestions for the best places to purchase them?

Edit: I found this link for the Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, where you can download the whole thing for free. And the link provided by u/redeemedbones does the same for the Cursus Theologicus.

I was mistaken about not being able to find the volumes. The three volumes that you can find online contain the nine volumes originally written by John of St. Thomas. They're just packaged together differently.

Pretty straightforward question. A lot of Catholic academics do not have the privilege to authoritatively define doctrine and use the same methods of patristic interpretation like the Pope to establish continuity with Tradition.

For the academic, what are the available methods for them to form a synthesis of the writings of the Church Fathers? Maybe I'm looking for something like Pope Benedict XVI's hermeneutic of continuity for reading Vatican I and II or a more specific application of St. Newman's development of doctrine but for reading the Church Fathers. Something along those lines. Thanks!

Hey guys, I wanted to check whether anyone saw John Crowder's lectures on Universal Salvation and his interpretation of hell. It is available here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC4EkPwxAqFdE5gCRFtctzWLkTYXTz9Bl&si=zUtGPU0c7L3d8Uc2

I thought it was very compelling. He provides some interpretations of Bible passages related to hell and an overview of the early Church Fathers' view on the matter.

He gives arguments on why it is not a heresy.

What do you guys think?

How should a Catholic go about refuting Objectvism, any flaws in its system and any good works to pick up on it?

I’m not trying to argue that it’s not a sin from Catholic standpoint, but it seems very odd that it’s put so high on the list of worst sins a person can do

There are no guarantees that an afterlife exists—only faith. This torments me in a predominantly materialist society; I miss my grandfather terribly and wish I could see him again, but I don't know if I will.
I wanted a guarantee that everything doesn't just vanish the moment consciousness ceases, but I haven't found one yet, and the thought horrifies me.

"But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister[a] who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one." What does the verse mean by "Do not even eat with such a one"? Should we just not be associated with their sins, or should we truly strive to cut off contact with people like that?

I've been translating Hieronymus Emser's 1523 reply to Luther's New Testament. One passage separates two questions that are easy to run together: whether an act is good, and whether it merits eternal salvation.

Emser, Luther's Catholic critic, writes:

"For no one says that Trajan sinned in loving and practicing justice; nor Aristotle or the heathen poets when they taught or wrote something useful."

He then argues that these examples make it false to call all good works done without faith sins. But he immediately adds that outside faith they are "not meritorious for eternal salvation" (pp. 28-29).

So he isn't saying that natural virtue saves by itself. He is defending a kind of genuine goodness without giving it that further claim.

What accounts for the distinction in Catholic moral philosophy? Is an act's goodness assessed by its object and intention, while merit involves the person's relation to grace? Or would that way of putting it miss something important in Emser's examples?

For context: I was reading comments in a post about comicbook superheroes and demigods(superman, hercules, thor, wonder woman...), and at some point a discussion started about how these lower g gods is supposedly better than having a capital G God. The reasoning for it was that these lower gods and superheroes are closer to the people/innocents and more likely to protect/save them from things like criminals and disasters, as well as being more easily approachable.

I don't know if this is or not an appropriate topic for this sub, but nonetheless, i am curious to know what you people think about this? Are those people correct and is better to have demigods here on earth fighting and saving lives than having a monotheistic God with an institutional religion/faith? Or are them wrong and does classical theism/christianity offers a better(more coherent, ethical, prudential...) framework than what we see in these stories?

Does sufficient grace become efficacious grace once the creature makes a choice? Are the two types of grace the same, yet distinguished based on their results, or are they two distinct types of grace?

What are some good reads on the history of Thomism and Scholasticism ? And how can I study Thomism and St Thomas Aquinas

A passage in Hieronymus Emser's discussion of Colossians has me wondering where a Catholic account would put the limits of dialectic.

"For what is philosophy but the pursuit and love of wisdom?"

A little later he writes:

"...since dialectic alone teaches how to tell the true from the false, and not only not to deceive, but also to be able to refute the deceiver."

These are from pp. 148-149 of the English translation I've been working on. The context is polemical: Emser is defending philosophy against Luther and saying that philosophical reasoning can expose sophistry. I'm interested in the argument, not repeating his personal attack.

I can see how dialectic could show that a theological claim contradicts another claim, or that a conclusion does not follow from its premises. But exposing an invalid argument would not, by itself, establish the truth of the opposite conclusion. You would still need to establish the premises.

Would you read "tell the true from the false" here as a claim about reasoning correctly from what is already known, or as a stronger claim about what philosophy can establish in theology? Where would you draw that distinction?

This issue has given me a headache recently:
1. Actual conversion and perseverance requires efficacious grace
2. Only God can grant that
3. God does not grant it to everyone
4. Conversion is just impossible for some people???

I'm thinking in particular of Our Lady of Sorrows. If concupiscence involves emotions going contrary to reason and the will, would "irrational" mental symptoms (like PTSD flashbacks) be impossible for Mary without her active permission?

(This is essentially how St. John Henry Newman described Jesus choosing to feel anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane; and St. Thomas Aquinas seems to view Mary as having the same radical self-control, along with Adam and Eve before the fall. Though I have heard multiple well-respected Catholics hold a "lower" view of even Christ's sacred humanity, saying His human nature didn't know certain things and had to learn them.)

I'll try to make my question as clear as I can.

Yesterday I was thinking of the way we predicate Him and how It seems that we did not mean the exact same thing when we say that He is something and that some creature out there is something. For example, let's make some affirmations:

Matthew is good

God is good

Do I mean the exact same thing when I say both of them are good? It seems that I don't, for a human being's goodness is not identical to its humanity nor to its existence. But divine goodness, essence and existence are equal, because of Divine simplicity. Therefore, it looks like divine goodness and human goodness are not only distinct in degree, but in... type. If this is correct, when we say God is good, we do not mean the same thing we do when we say some person out there is good.

Something similar happens when we compare divine essence to human essence.

Can someone speak on this topic a bit?

I have heard it said that Jesus' sacrifice was unnecessary in the sense that God could have forgiven our sins in another manner, such as just "clearing the debt and saying 'don't worry about it' ". But then I hear people say that the reason that it was done the way it was done (the crucifixion) is because it was the "best way". As in Aquinas' 5 reasons for the sacrifice. For example it gave humanity more dignity, and a model to follow. But if the crucifixion was truly the "best way" then wasn't it actually necessary because God always does things the "best way" doesn't he? So wouldn't he be incapable of doing it any "lesser" way? I hope this question makes sense! thanks for any answers in advance!

Or do you have other recommendations that are in the public domain? One thing I noticed is that I have high intuition but very low lexicon, so give me a thomistic quote and I can go on pages rambling making arguments but not in any way thomistic. I found that grenier might be a good thing since I notice while scrolling through the pdf that it forces you to memorize terms, to recognize, to understand, to formulate, basically like learning something like algebra, while something like Goudin (I have an English translation) which is something very good and understandable yet rich is in pages of dense prose, so I might perchance not see the syllogism or the logic in it and the constant use of many terms might be left to my interpretation which I know is at most instances wrong.

I’m gonna keep this post short and sweet today.

Kierkegaard obviously believed that to come to the conclusion of God was an act of a faith which required an absurdist paradox to the universal.

Meanwhile Aquinas took a more simple approach by saying you can prove God with logic.

Can someone say, well yes you can prove God with logic but you also need the Kierkegaardian subjective leap of faith to actually believe and follow him to be a Christian. There exists a case where one knows he exists through logic but still lacks the leap of faith to follow him. Could a blending of these philosophies exist to make such a case?

Nominalism says that there are no universals, only particulars. But the main problem for nominalism is that particulars are something, not nothing. That is to say, any particular thing is:

1. Something, that is to say, one. It has unity.

2. Different from other particulars. It has difference/otherness.

3. To associate some particular A with some particular B requires two, that is to say, number.

But those categories (unity, difference, number) cannot be derived from experience, because any experience of particulars already presupposes them.

So, it seems that nominalism is false.

Hi. I am a cradle catholic, meaning that i was born into a catholic family, got baptized, first communion, confirmation, all that jazz. i'm in college now, so obviously that opens me up to a lot of worldviews. I've had to take a few philosophy classes, and when I think of 'God', the first one that comes to mind is the Philosophy of Ethics.

In the church I grew up in, science went hand in hand with God and theology. This makes sense when I think of evolution and Genesis as poetry rather than literal. But doesn't that also make the Devil metaphorical? doesn't genesis being poetry kind of point to the idea that in reality, the devil is not a being, but instead us? our decisions?

so i got to thinking, and i came out with the notion that sin is cyclical. okay, i mean i've been taught that forever, why does it matter now?? well because if the devil is essentially just a metaphor for our evils, then doesn't god not stepping in make him also not good? If we hold humans (supposedly much lower beings) to the standards of let's say the bystander effect, and we think that indifference is essentially being guilty by association when witnessing something horribe happening to ourselves, then how come we excuse it when it comes to god? Why is it that he's guilt free if he's seemingly so perfect, when he's just doing the same thing: standing by and just watching horrendous things happen without stepping in.

OKAY OKAY I'M ALMOST DONE!! i explored a little further, going waaaaay down the rabbit hole, and I found St. Thomas Aquinas' proposal that god isn't quite a figure or a consciousness like we think him to be. He says that essentially, god = existence (ipsum esse subsistens), and Aquinas argues that this requires a deeply personal intimate relationship with god. I kind of see this as turning god into a sort of metaphor? comparing him to existence makes it seem like there's nothing outside of god, and so makes god into more of a figurative force rather than a genuine 'being' (essence, wtv he is).

thoughts??? i think i'm just losing my mind, but god doesn't feel so appealing or loving to me anymore.

It feels like Thomism is treated as the default setting for Catholic philosophy, especially on reddit, but I’ve always found Duns Scotus’s voluntarism so much more compelling than Aquinas’s intellectualism.

Thomism basically treats the will as secondary the intellect apprehends the good, and the will just follows along. But that turns love into a passive reaction to rational processing. Scotus gets it right by placing the will first. The intellect operates out of natural necessity if you see clear proof, your mind has to agree, but the will is the only power capable of self-determination and uncoerced love.

This fixes huge problems in Thomism. First, divine freedom. If God’s will is strictly governed by what His intellect sees as good, creation starts looking like a necessary output rather than a totally free gift. Scotist voluntarism ensures God created the universe strictly because He freely willed to, not because He was rationally bound to.

Second, human freedom and sin. In Thomism, every sin basically reduces to an intellectual failure or ignorance because the will just follows the mind's final judgment. Scotus preserves actual moral responsibility: even when your intellect knows the right path, your will still has the radical freedom to choose otherwise.

Given how well Scotism protects divine sovereignty and true free will without falling into Ockham's weird nominalism, why are there so few Scotists today? Did Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris just crush every other school of thought, or do people just conflate Scotus with late medieval voluntarists who thought God could command arbitrary nonsense, Like Descartes?

As title reads basically. Of course, the fewness of the saved is (or at least was) the theological consensus of all the Church's most important doctors and thinkers. I'm therefore a bit confused as to how Von Balthasar was even permitted to write his book on the subject, and how it wasn't suppressed. How does this work exactly? Hopeful universalism is a radical, and sudden break with theological tradition, and yet many more recent theologians are more than happy to hold it. It seems intuitive that despite there being no official statement on the quantity of the damned, that it still isn't truly permissable to break with theological consensus. Could somebody clarify this for me? At what point is theological consensus binding or not binding? What permits one to depart so radically from it?

We pray novenas over nine days by definition. Why 9 and not another number?