The Christian Vanguard

Probably the most well known objection to St. Anselm's Ontological argument, usually attributed to Kant, says that existence is not a predicate. When we inquire into the nature of things, we say that it is this shape and that color, and these statements have some meaningful content to them because we are able to predicate something to them. They tell us something about the object. However, saying that X exists tells us nothing about the nature of the object. So being is not a predicate.  This is not the view of the scholastics, and definitely not the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who does say being (or existence) is a predicate. So how then do we deal with the above objection? Let's look at the mode of inquiry. When we ask what something is, we answer by giving a more common term to which we add a specific difference. So when we ask what a cat is, we say it is a mammal that has this or that distinguishing feature. We may ask what this more common thing is as well, and we ...

Adam Omelianchuck has a paper in Vol. 13, No. 1 of Philosophia Christi that discusses the ontological subordination of men and women. He argues that men and women are not ontologically equal. The basis for this, he argues, is on the function of men and women. Being familiar with natural law, this is comfortable ground for me. The function of women is to be a helper, and the function for man is to be a leader. There is a difference in role, and there is a hierarchy of subordination, but what he seems to draw out is that this entails there is an ontological inequality between men and women.  He presents a Hierarchy's Less Valuable Function Principle, which states,  Necessarily, given the two functions, F1 serving as a means to and end and F2 having authority to direct the end, if any person having F1 is, in virtue of having F1, essentially subordinate to a person having F2, then F1 is a less valuable function than F2.   Now, men and women have these functions...