Causality
Posted on 3 April 2011
Plato sets out criticisms against his own theory of Forms in the "Parmenides". In this episode Peter looks at the criticisms, including the Third Man Argument, and asks what Plato wants us to conclude from them.
Posted on 26 June 2011
Aristotle's Physics presents four types of cause: formal, material, final and efficient. Peter looks at all four, and asks whether evolutionary theory undermines final causes in nature.
Posted on 8 January 2012
Peter looks at the Stoic idea of god, a providential fire that pervades nature, and considers their idea of a deterministic and eternally recurring cosmos.
Posted on 6 October 2013
In his Incoherence of the Philosophers, al-Ghazālī attacks Avicenna’s theories about the eternity of the universe and insists on the possibility of miracles.
Posted on 12 January 2014
Abraham Ibn Ezra, Ibn Daud and Maimonides consider the philosophical implications of astrology as science flourishes in the Jewish culture of Andalusia.
Posted on 21 December 2014
Peter Damian takes up a question with surprising philosophical implications: can God restore virginity to a woman who has lost it?
Posted on 5 July 2015
Roger Bacon extols the power of science based on experience and uses a general theory of "species" to explain light and vision.
Posted on 8 January 2017
Gautama and his commentators tell us how to separate good inferences from bad ones.
Posted on 4 June 2017
Bradwardine and other thinkers based at Oxford make breakthroughs in physics by applying mathematics to motion.
Posted on 18 June 2017
Ockham, Buridan, Oresme and Francis of Marchia explore cosmology, atomism, and the impetus involved in motion.
Posted on 25 June 2017
Nāgārjuna applies his emptiness theory to motion, change, and cognition.
Posted on 12 November 2017
Dignāga’s trairūpya theory, which sets out the three conditions required for making reliable inferences.
Posted on 3 February 2019
Special forms of knowledge and the explanation of misfortunes in African tradition.
Posted on 21 April 2019
Gregory Palamas and the controversy over his teaching that we can go beyond human reason by grasping God through his activities or “energies”.
Posted on 9 June 2019
Anton Wilhelm Amo, brought to Germany from his native Ghana, defends a rigorous dualism of mind and body. Was this philosophy connected to his African origins?
Posted on 2 February 2020
Hosea Easton’s Treatise provides an overlooked but fascinating theory of race and racism.
