Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / This dissertation offers a critical response to the fundamental sacramental theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet drawing on the works of Bernard Lonergan. Chauvet has articulated a significant critique of the western theological tradition's use of metaphysics, especially in interpreting doctrines relating to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, liturgical sacrifice, and sacramental causality. Chauvet's criticisms raise questions about what philosophical tools allow theologians to develop a fruitful analogical understanding of the mysteries communicated in the sacraments. This dissertation responds to Chauvet's challenge to theology to adopt a new foundation in the symbolic by turning to the derived, critical metaphysics of Bernard Lonergan. The dissertation argues that Lonergan's critical metaphysics can help theologians to develop fruitful understandings of doctrines relating to Eucharistic presence, liturgical sacrifice, and sacramental causality. In addition Lonergan's categories of meaning offer resources for interpreting sacramental doctrines on the level of the time, while maintaining the genuine achievements of the past. Chapter one presents a survey of some recent Catholic Eucharistic theologies in order to provide a context for our investigation. Here we identify existentialist-phenomenological, postmodern, and neo-traditionalist approaches to Eucharistic doctrines. Chapters two, three, and four present a dialectical comparison of Chauvet and Lonergan on metaphysics as it pertains to Eucharistic theology specifically. Chapter two examines Chauvet's postmodern critique of metaphysical foundations of scholastic Eucharistic theology. Our particular concern will be with Chauvet's methods, especially whether his appropriation of the Heideggerian critique of scholastic theology offers an accurate account of Thomas Aquinas, and whether it offers a fruitful way forward in Eucharistic theology. Chapter three explores Lonergan's foundations for metaphysics in cognitional theory and epistemology. Lonergan's critical groundwork in cognitional theory attends to the problems of bias and the polymorphism of human consciousness that lead to a heuristic metaphysics rather than a tidy conceptual system. Chapter four explicates Lonergan's heuristic metaphysics and articulates the elements of metaphysics that enable an understanding of the general category of causality in critical realist metaphysics. Chapter five explores Lonergan's foundations for theological reflection paying particular attention to the importance of intellectual conversion before going on to survey Lonergan's categories of meaning. Chapter six engages the task of systematic theology and proposes an understanding of Eucharistic doctrines grounded in Lonergan's critical realist philosophy and transposed into categories of meaning. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Peter J. Kreeft / Thesis advisor: Ronald K. Tacelli / This thesis explores and defends the compatibility of divine involvement and human freedom. It argues that, far from determining human actions, divine foreknowledge and providence stand in a unique metaphysical relationship to human free will. This relationship is explored through a creative appropriation of St. Thomas Aquinas' theory of participation. Divine knowledge and causation transcend ordinary models of knowledge and causation, operating on a different metaphysical plane than human speculative knowledge and created causation. Ultimately, the compatibility of God and human freedom rests upon an understanding of divine causality as creative and constitutive. Rather than overpowering genuine human causality, divine involvement grounds the very possibility of free human choice. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This project sets out to answer the following question: according to Aristotle, what does movement contribute to or change about being? The first part works through the argument for the existence of movement in the Physics. This argument includes distinctive innovations in the structure of being, notably the simultaneous unity and manyness of being: while material and form are one thing, they are two in being. This makes it possible for Aristotle to argue that movement is not intrinsically related to what is not: what comes to be does not emerge from non-being, it comes from something that is in a different sense. The second part turns to the Metaphysics to show that and how the lineage of potency and activity the inquiry into movement. A central problem is that activity or actuality, energeia, does not at first seem to be intrinsically related to a completeness or end, telos. With the unity of different senses of being at stake, Aristotle establishes that it is by showing that activity or actuality is movement most of all, and that movement has and is a complete end. Thus, it is movement that leads Aristotle to conclude that substance and form are energeia, and that unity of being is possible. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Jean-Luc Solère / Thesis advisor: Marius Stan / My dissertation focuses on the problem of matter's divisibility in the 17th-18th centuries. The problem of material divisibility is a focal point at which the metaphysical principle of simplicity and the mathematical principle of space's infinite divisibility conflict. The principle of simplicity is the metaphysical requirement that there must be a simple or indivisible being that is the constitutive foundation of all composite things in nature. Without simple beings, there cannot be composite beings. The mathematical principle of space's infinite divisibility is a staple of Euclidean geometry: space must be divisible into infinitely smaller parts because indivisibles or points cannot compose extension. Without reconciling these metaphysical and mathematical principles, one can call into question the integrity of mathematics and metaphysics. Metaphysical contradiction results from the application of metaphysical simplicity to the composition of material bodies that occupy infinitely divisible space. How can a simple being constitute a material object while occupying a space that lacks a smallest part? Should we assume that a composite material object (such as the paper in front of the reader) exists in an infinitely divisible space, then the simple beings must occupy a space that consists of ever smaller spaces. The simple being thereby appears to consist of parts simpler than itself--a metaphysical contradiction. Philosophers resolve this contradiction by either modifying the metaphysical principle of simplicity to allow for the occupation of infinitely divisible space, or have simply dismissed one principle for the sake of preserving the other principle. The rejection of one principle for preserving the other principle is an undesirable path. Philosophers would either forfeit any attempt to account for the composition of material reality by rejecting simplicity or deny understanding of geometry heretofore via the rejection of space's infinite divisibility. My objective in this dissertation is two-fold: 1.) to provide an historical analysis of various philosophers' attempts to reconcile simplicity and infinite divisibility or to argue for the exclusive nature of the said principles; 2.) to articulate a reconciliation between simplicity and infinite divisibility. Underlying both objectives is my attempt to draw a connection between the metaphysical principle of simplicity and the metaphysical principle of sufficient reason. Having shown in the historical section that each philosopher implicitly references a modified version of the principle of sufficient reason when articulating their theories of metaphysical simplicity, I will use this common principle to develop a Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem of material divisibility. This Neo-Aristotelian solution differs from other accounts in the historical section by including a potential parts theory of material divisibility while modifying the principle of simplicity: simple beings are no longer conceived as constitutive parts of a material thing, but as the sources of unity for a natural composite being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Thomas Groome / Western culture idealizes the quest for authenticity as a significant life project. This culture of authenticity is characterized by the understanding that it is important for each person to search for their unique life expression and purpose, even as larger social, political, religious, and other such frameworks are generally suspected of being in conflict with or in opposition to the truly authentic. Further, the forces of secularism and pluralism have allowed for a wide dissemination of varied and often conflicting views about what constitutes an authentic way of being in the world. Within such a secular-pluralistic milieu, the prevalence of different and often competing views is particularly acute in regards to contemporary images and concepts of God, particularly as these relate to the (post)modern quest for authenticity. For instance, while our culture's widespread suspicion that larger religious frameworks inhibit authenticity has in part led to a significant rise in the numbers of those unaffiliated with any religious tradition, a majority of the unaffiliated still claim to believe in God. This somewhat paradoxical phenomenon can be traced back to the secular-pluralist profusion of various understandings and expressions regarding the meaning of "God." Within these circumstances, "authentic" relation to the divine is often seen as a highly individualized and even subjective concern; as something having to do with what best expresses a person's own feelings and inner personal world regarding the unique meaning of their life. This dissertation posits that Catholic religious and theological education needs to take seriously the importance our culture accords to the quest for authenticity and to actively work against its individualistic, expressivist, and subjectivist tendencies. Unmasking the illusion that authenticity requires dismissing larger frameworks, such as religious tradition, I posit that it is only within larger frameworks that we are able to discern the more from the less authentic. In terms of images and conceptions of God then, I argue that a Catholic education for today requires retrieving the Catholic Intellectual Tradition's discipline of philosophical theology so as to provide students with the resources necessary for discerning the true, living God from among the jumble of ideas and images on offer within secular-pluralism. Ch. 1 provides an historical overview of the culture of authenticity and in the process defines the latter and its relation to secular-pluralism and to the proliferation of images and conceptions of God. Philosophical theology is introduced as potentially necessary component of a Catholic education that seeks to help students discern the authentic, or true God. Ch. 2 takes up the question of authenticity as related to conflicting ideas about the truth of existence and in this light offers an understanding of truth as engaged, relational, and non-absolute. This understanding grounds the contemporary philosophical theological approach presented in chapters four and five. First, however, Ch. 3 looks at the thought of Thomas Aquinas as standard for the field of philosophical theology and therefore as necessary for (creatively) retrieving for its usefulness today. Chapter 4 begins the process of retrieval by outlining the ways in which W. Norris Clarke's Thomistically based "Inner" and "Outer" Paths to God provide elements for a contemporary philosophical theology. Ch. 5 continues in this vein as it turns to the work of Elizabeth Johnson to elucidate the socioeconomic, political, and cultural aspects that must be attended to by any contemporary philosophical theology. Ch. 6 proposes Thomas Groome's Shared Christian Praxis approach to Christian religious education as theoretically and practically compatible with a contemporary philosophical theology and therefore as the most suitable pedagogical approach to educating from and for faith. I conclude the dissertation with a brief reflection on what lessons philosophical theology has to offer to Catholic religious and theological education as a whole. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

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In my dissertation I develop and defend a deliberative account of causation: causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we use when we decide on one thing in order to achieve another. Tamsin’s taking her umbrella is a cause of her staying dry, for example, if and only if her deciding to take her umbrella for the sake of staying dry is adequate grounds for believing she’ll stay dry. I defend the account in the form of a biconditional that relates causal relations to evidential relations. This biconditional makes claims about causal relations, not just our causal concepts, and constrains metaphysical accounts of causation, including reductive ones. Surely we need science to investigate causal structure. But we can’t justify any particular account of causation independently of its relevance for us. This deliberative account explains why we should care about causation, why we deliberate on the future and not the past, and even why causes come prior in time to their effects. In chapter 1 I introduce the motivations for the project: to reconcile causation and our freedom as agents with the picture of the world presented by physics. Fundamental physics makes no mention of causes. And the lawlike character of the world seems to rule out freedom to decide. My dissertation offers a combined solution—I explain our freedom in epistemic terms and use this freedom to make sense of causation. In chapter 2 I draw on philosophy of action and decision theory to develop an epistemic model of deliberation, one based in requirements on belief. If we’re to deliberate, our beliefs can’t epistemically settle how we’ll decide, yet our decisions must epistemically settle what we’ll do. This combination of belief and suspension of belief explains why we rationally take ourselves to be free to decide on different options in deliberation. In chapter 3 I defend this model from near rivals that also explain freedom in terms of belief. Accounts of ‘epistemic freedom’ from David Velleman, James Joyce and Jenann Ismael appeal to our justification to form beliefs ‘unconstrained’ by evidence. Yet, I will argue, these accounts are susceptible to counterexamples and turn out to rely on a primitive ability to believe at will—one that makes the appeal to justification redundant. J. G. Fichte’s Idealist account of freedom, based in a primitive activity of the ‘I’, nicely illustrates the kind of freedom these accounts rely on. In chapter 4 I develop the epistemic model of deliberation into a deliberative account of causation. I argue that A is a type-level cause of B if and only if an agent deciding on a state of affairs of type A in ‘proper deliberation’, for the sake of a state of affairs of type B would be good evidence of a state of affairs of type B obtaining. This biconditional explains why we should care about causal relations—they direct us to good decisions. But existing accounts of causation don’t adequately explain why causation matters. James Woodward’s interventionist account explicates ‘control’ and ‘causation’ in the very same terms—and so can’t appeal to a relation between them to explain why we should care about causal relations. David Lewis’ reductive account relies on standards for evaluating counterfactuals, but doesn’t motivate them or explain why a causal relation analysed in these terms should matter. Delivering the right verdicts is not enough. The deliberative account explains why causation matters, by relating causal relations to the evidential relations needed for deliberation. In chapter 5 I use the deliberative account to explain causal asymmetry—why, contingently, causes come before their effects. Following an approach from Huw Price, because deliberation comes prior to decision, deliberation undermines evidential relations towards the past. So an agent’s deciding for the sake of the past in proper deliberation won’t be appropriate evidence of the past, and backwards causation is not implied. To explain why deliberation comes prior to decision, I appeal to an epistemic asymmetry, one that is explained by statistical-mechanical accounts of causation in non-causal terms. But statistical-mechanical accounts still need the deliberative account to justify why the relations they pick out as causal should matter to us. The deliberative account of causation relates causal relations to the evidential relations of use to deliberating agents. It constrains metaphysical accounts, while revealing their underlying explanatory structure. And it does not rule out explanations of causal asymmetry based in physics, but complements them. Overall this project makes sense of causation by foregrounding its relevance for us.

The dissertation offers a dispositional theory of causation. When a stone is thrown at a vase causing it to shatter, the stone acts as stimulus to the vase’s fragility. The analysis developed from this basic identity of cause and stimulus is defended against counterexamples and problem cases from the causation literature. Grounding causation in what is immanent in interacting objects is shown to yield a more satisfactory theory of causation than prevalent deflationary accounts that appeal to possible worlds, pattern-conformation, or statistical regularities. Most recent work on causation focuses exclusively on physics and metaphysics; the dissertation explores the ramifications for ethics following from a dispositional theory of causation. Consider so-called “causation by omission”: the vase, teetering on a shelf, falls to the ground and shatters; you could have caught it, but you didn’t. Was it your failure to catch the vase that caused it to shatter? The dispositional theory identifies the impact, and not your omission to catch it, as the cause or stimulus. Regardless of whether one’s act is the cause of the breakage, one may still be held responsible for failing to act in a given away. Why is this so and what does it tell us about causation?

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