Research
My research focuses on fundamental questions about truth, knowledge, modality, and understanding in ancient and medieval philosophy: What is the nature of truth and how do various uses of the term ‘true’ relate to one another? What explains our access to abstract, necessary truths? How do we acquire and articulate moral knowledge and understanding? These questions guide my work in ancient and medieval epistemology, metaphysics, and logic.
Dissertation:
Augustine and the Epistemology of the Liberal Arts
Central to Augustine's philosophical project throughout his career is the question of how we can acquire knowledge of God. In his early dialogues, Augustine argues that knowledge of the liberal arts is a necessary condition for knowledge of the divine nature. But it is unclear what the liberal arts have to do with divinity. I show that to answer this question we must examine both the subject matter and the structure of the liberal arts. In his early dialogues, Augustine suggests that the subject matter of the liberal arts is the eternal and immutable intelligible Forms, i.e., the non-perceptual, abstract, archetypal objects which structure and undergird reality. Each liberal art corresponds to a segment of intelligible reality (e.g., arithmetic to numbers and dialectic to valid modes of inference). These intelligibles, as contents of the divine mind, make the liberal arts necessary for coming to grasp God's nature in that they offer glimpses of the eternal divine essence. Regarding their structure, Augustine holds that each liberal art is composed of definitions and theorems. Unlike contemporary philosophers who regard definitions as conventional, Augustine maintains that definitions pick out essential properties of the intelligibles. Furthermore, my analysis shows that the liberal arts are structured as axiomatic-deductive sciences: definitions capture first principles or fundamental truths and the axiomatic structure reflects how theorems are grounded in these definitions. This structure provides explanatory understanding of distinct segments of intelligible reality. In this way, by learning the liberal arts, we acquire understanding of the very structure of intelligible reality and are better positioned to grasp the divine essence. I also suggest that in his later works, Augustine recognizes that certain key tenets of Christianity—e.g., God's triune nature, Christ's resurrection, and the incarnation—cannot be grasped merely through learning the liberal arts. He acknowledges that accepting the authoritative reports of scripture will be necessary for coming to know and understand these fundamental Christian beliefs.
Augustine:
In Book 2 of De Libero Arbitrio (Lib. Arb.), Augustine devises a proof of God’s existence and also seems to identify God with truth. In this paper, I reconstruct two distinct proofs: (1) Augustine’s proof of God’s existence and (2) his argument for the identification of God with truth. While scholars have long recognized that Augustine offers a proof of God’s existence in Lib. Arb. 2.14–39, the fact that he has two dialectical aims in this section of the dialogue has been overlooked in the secondary literature. An upshot of disentangling these dialectical aims is that the two proofs turn out to be doctrinally neutral, resting not on any specifically Christian tenets, but rather on Augustine’s commitment to the existence of the intelligible Forms.
In one of his earliest dialogues, the Soliloquia, Augustine identifies the liberal arts (disciplinae) with truth (veritas) and employs this somewhat puzzling identification as a premise in his infamous proof of the immortality of the soul (Sol. 2.24). This contribution examines Augustine’s argument for this peculiar identification. Augustine maintains both that the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are true and that the liberal art of dialectic (disciplina disputandi) is the “truth through which all disciplines are true” (Sol. 2.21). It is argued that Augustine identifies the liberal arts with truth because (1) the constituent propositions of the liberal arts are learned and (2) dialectic’s structure is essential to the liberal arts. The contribution further suggests that the subject matter of each liberal art reflects a distinct segment of intelligible reality, that is, the realm of the intelligible Forms.
Porphyry:
Properties and Accidents in Porphyry's Isagoge, Under Review
In this paper, I examine Porphyry's treatment of properties and accidents in the Isagoge. Scholars have long wondered whether properties fit within the Peripatetic essence-accident framework. I show that for Porphyry properties constitute a proper subset of accidents because they bear the distinctive mark of accidentality, namely mental separability. I suggest that although Porphyry treats properties as accidental predicates, he carves out a special niche in his logic for properties because they have distinctive logical features that make them useful for constructing demonstrative arguments.