This paper reconstructs the account of concept formation developed in the 4th Century A.D. by Themistius in the most ancient extant commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Themistius’ account can be contrasted with two widespread modern interpretations of Aristotle. Unlike psychological empiricists, Themistius ascribes an active role in concept formation to our innate capacity of understanding. Unlike intuitionists, he would not be satisfied by saying that νοῦς “intuits” or “spots” concepts. Rather, the question is what makes our νοῦς capable of “finding” (...) and “recognizing” concepts in experience, and this can only be an understanding prior to all experience. Themistius seems to be responding here to Platonist arguments against Aristotle’s epistemology: postulating a “potential νοῦς” is not enough, for one can apply Meno’s dilemma to it and ask how it can recognize that it has found what it was looking for. But, contrary to the judgment of some modern scholars, Themistius never embraced the theory of recollection either. He argued that both empiricism and Platonist innatism are wrong and developed a middle path marked by a strong interdependence between the perceptive and the rational capacity. This holds for all rational learning, and concept formation is its first stage: to form a concept means to learn something genuinely new, but also to recognize it as falling, e. g., under one of the ten categories. While being presented as a mere “paraphrasis” of Aristotle’s words, Themistius’ account is a well-advised and original response to the epistemological debates of his time. (shrink)

The debate over the value of pleasure among Eudoxus, Speusippus, and Aristotle is dramatically documented by the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly in the dialectical pros-and-cons concerning the so-called argument from contraries. Two similar versions of this argument are preserved at EN VII. 13, 1153b1–4, and X. 2, 1172b18–20. Many scholars believe that the argument at EN VII is either a report or an appropriation of the Eudoxean argument in EN X. This essay aims to revise this received view. It will explain (...) why these two arguments differ in premises, contents and purposes, and why these distinctions matter for a proper assessment of Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure and pain in general and his dialectical art in particular. (shrink)

The core sense of pistis as understood in Posterior Analytics, De Anima, and the Rhetoric is not that of a logical relation in which cognitively grasped propositions stand in respect to one another, but the result of an act of socially embedded interpersonal communication, a willing acceptance of guidance offered in respect to action. Even when pistis seems to have an exclusively epistemological sense, this focal meaning of pistis is implicit; to have pistis in a proposition is to willingly accept (...) that proposition as a basis for some kind of activity (albeit possibly theoretical) as a result of some kind of communicative act. This is in accordance with Aristotle’s understanding of argumentation as a social practice, entered into in order lead others to certain actions, for certain ends. Understanding pistis in this way allows us to understand how it is that pistis admits of quantitative variation. (shrink)

1. At least since W.F. Edwards’ pioneering articles on medieval and renaissance interpretations of the prologue to Galen's Art of Medicine,1 it has often been maintained that Latin scholastics inte...

This is a translation, made by myself, of the paper to be published in Portuguese in the journal Discurso, 2020, in honour of the late professor Oswaldo Porchat. I discuss what Aristotle was trying to encode when he said that the object of scientific knowledge is necessary, or that what we know (scientifically) cannot be otherwise etc. The paper is meant as a continuation of previous papers—orientated towards a book on the Posterior Analytics—and thus does not discuss in much detail (...) key passages, as the very definition of scientific knowledge in APo I.2, or passages from APo I.4 and I.6 (for these, I refer to my previous papers). This paper is mainly focused on Aristotle’s references to his notion of scientific knowledge both in other passages from the APo and in other treatises. I intend to show that there is a progressive, intrinsic relation between the two requirements by which scientific knowledge is defined. It is not true that each of these requirements stems from a different source. The Causal-Explanatory requirements gives Aristotle the general heading. Then, the Necessity Requirement ranges over the explanatory relation between explanans and explanandum and thereby specifies what sort of cause is sctricly required for having scientific knowledge of a given explanandum. Now, Aristotle was also concerned with the necessary truth of the elemental predications that constitute a demonstration. My claim that the Necessity Requirement ranges over the explanatory relation does not ignore that concern, and does not deny it. My claim is that Aristotle’s main focus, and main concern, consists in stressing that the explanatory factor to be captured in scientific knowledge of a given explanandum is such that cannot be otherwise. (shrink)

I discuss the exact meaning of the thesis according to which the object of scientific knowledge is necessary. The thesis is expressed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, in his definition of scientific knowledge. The traditional interpretation understands this definition as depending on two parallel and independent requirements, the causality requirement and the necessity requirement. Against this interpretation, I try to show, through the examination of several passages that refer to the definition of scientific knowledge, that the necessity requirement specifies (...) more exactly the causality requirement: what cannot be otherwise is the explanatory relation between the explanandum and the cause by which it is what it is. (shrink)

Our article deals with Aristotle’s account of the sphere of temperance in the Nicomachean Ethics. The goal is to provide a detailed analysis of NE III.10 in order to identify the difficulties this chapter presents us with and to introduce and discuss the interpretations set forth by the secondary literature. Of special interest to us are Aristotle’s intense dialogue with Plato; the difficulty in understanding touch as the most common of the senses and Aristotle’s severe judgment of the pleasures of (...) the sphere of temperance. In short, Aristotle seems to set out from platonic thesis and notions only to distance himself from them by introducing his own, associating temperance with the most common of the senses, namely, the sense of touch. This association is not based, as it could seem primafacie, on a merely empirical observation but on the assumption that touch is the most fundamental and necessary sense for humans and animals alike. Temperance, therefore, as the excellence in the relation with the most fundamental and necessary of the senses, seems to be a pre-condition for rational action. From this Aristotle derives the etymology of the term, as the one who preserves practical reason. This hypothesis would explain why Aristotle seems to engage in apotreptic language to characterize the lack of temperance, that is, the vice of intemperance – something we do not find the in the account of any other virtue and vice. (shrink)

I present Aristotle’s theory of causation in a way that privileges a comparison with contemporary discussion on causation. I do so by selecting in Aristotle’s theory points that are interesting to contemporary discussion and by translating Aristotle in the contemporary philosophical terminology. I compare Aristotle’s views with Mackie’s (1993/1965) and Sosa’s (1993/1980). Mackie is a humean regularist regarding the metaphysics of causal necessity, but his theory postulates some formal aspects of the causal relation which are similar to the Aristotelian theory. (...) By introducing the notion of causal field as a third causal relatum – a sample in which the cause must be picked out as a explanation coextensive to the effect –, Mackie holds a point very similar to Aristotle, inasmuch as both defend that the causal relation is triadic and both have the extensional desideratum. Sosa (1993/1980) defends that every cause necessitates its effect, arguing against classical Humeanism, and he also proposes a causal pluralism. Both these theses are clearly Aristotelian. Aristotle comprehends that the causal relation has three relata: a subjacent C, a property of that subjacent A and a cause B that explains why such property is attributed to that subjacent. The subjacent is similar to Mackie’s notion of causal field, for in regard to it the cause must be coextensive to the property. But Aristotle also says that for each explanandum (property attributed to a subjacent of which one aims to investigate a cause) there is only one cause, which necessitates it. Sosa and Aristotle are similar because both develop a causal pluralism from a theory of causes as having intrinsic necessitation. For Aristotle, causes/explanations [aitiai] are central for attaining scientific knowledge, and its triadic structure determines the syllogistic structure of scientific demonstrations. Aristotle’s theory of causation also involves comprehending the actualisation of capacities (dispositional properties of objects) affirming that the causal relation is resultant from intrinsic properties of the objects, and the cause B is the essence of the explanandum. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics II 16-17, Aristotle seems to claim that there cannot be more than one explanans of the same scientific explanandum. However, this seems to be true only for “primary-universal” demonstrations, in which the major term belongs to the minor “in itself” and the middle term is coextensive with the extremes. If so, several explananda we would like to admit as truly scientific would be out of the scope of an Aristotelian science. The secondary literature has identified a second (...) problem in II 16-17: the middle term of a demonstration is sometimes taken as the definition of the minor term (the subject), other times as the definition (or the causal part of the definition) of the major (the demonstrable attribute). I shall argue that Aristotle’s solution to the first problem involves showing that certain problematic attributes, which appear to admit more than one explanation, actually fall into the privileged scenario of primary-universal demonstrations. In addition, his solution suggests a conciliatory way-out to our second problem (or so I shall argue): the existence of an attribute as a definable unity depends on its subject having the essence it has, which suggests that both the essence of subjects and the essence of demonstrable attributes can play explanatory roles in demonstrations. (shrink)

In De Anima 1.4, Aristotle asks whether the soul can be moved by its own affections. His conclusion—that to say the soul grows angry is like saying that it weaves and builds—has traditionally been read on the assumption that it is false to credit the soul with weaving and building; I argue that Aristotle’s analysis of psychological motions implies his belief that the soul does in fact weave and build.

A presente pesquisa visa caracterizar o método empregado por Aristóteles na Ethica Nicomachea a partir de uma análise que contrasta duas interpretações: de um lado, a tese já tradicional que busca ver na filosofia prática do Estagirita um método estritamente dialético; de outro, a tese alternativa, explorada apenas recentemente, que aponta o uso, na EN, de um procedimento filosófico próximo das prescrições sugeridas nos Segundos Analíticos para a busca definicional nas ciências. O núcleo da primeira tese deverá ser analisado sob (...) duas perspectivas: (i) examinando um conjunto de textos que revelam o teor dialético da filosofia aristotélica; e (ii) avaliando o processo de expansão da noção de dialética e suas implicações para os estudos aristotélicos. Alternativamente, (i) será examinado como um modelo de tipo definicional pode reaproximar a ética do registro científico dos Segundos Analíticos sem necessariamente se valer de argumentos dialéticos. Por fim (ii), proponho uma versão deflacionária do que deve contar como método dialético em Aristóteles. (shrink)

La premisa que guía nuestra investigación es que Poética es un tratado científico, i. e., que la investigación desarrollada en dicha obra se corresponde con el examen de una téchne. Defendemos que el método utilizado se corresponde con el método general de investigación denominado “salvar las apariencias”. Tal método es expuesto con más detalle en otras obras del corpus pero lo presuponemos utilizado en Poética. Si bien el método presupone la recolección de datos, no se limita a eso puesto que (...) el paso ulterior consiste en la caracterización de las diferencias y la exposición de las cuatro causas del fenómeno. De este modo, expondremos por un lado la base fenoménica de Poética y, por otro, sus cuatro causas. (shrink)

I discuss the notion of education or educatedness (paideia) involved in the ‘educated human being’ (pepaideumenos), which Aristotle presents at the beginning of his Parts of Animals and a few other passages. The competence of educated human beings makes them able to evaluate some aspects of the explanations in a given domain without having a determinate knowledge about the specific subject-matter in that domain. I examine how such a competence is possible and how it is related to other critical abilities (...) which Aristotle usually ascribes to the science of being qua being. Discuto a noção de educação ou cultura (paideia) envolvida na figura do ser humano cultivado (pepaideumenos), que Aristóteles apresenta no início do tratado As Partes dos Animais e em algumas outras passagens. A competência do ser humano cultivado o habilita a avaliar certo aspecto das explicações propostas em um dado domínio, sem requerer dele um conhecimento determinado sobre o assunto específico do mesmo domínio. Examino de que modo essa competência é possível e como ela se articula a outras habilidades críticas que Aristóteles geralmente associa à ciência do ser enquanto ser. (shrink)

Scholarship on Aristotle’s NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (hereafter “the Ethics”) flourishes in an almost unprecedented fashion. In the last ten years, universities in North America have produced on average over ten doctoral dissertations a year that discuss the practical philosophy that Aristotle espouses in his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics. Since the beginning of the millennium there have been three new translations of the entire Ethics into English alone, several more that translate parts of the work into English and other modern (...) languages, and half a dozen collections of new articles discussing Aristotle’s Ethics. Such an outpouring of scholarship has produced an almost unmanageable wave of books, articles, and reviews. Through my topical bibliography, I seek to organize this wealth of scholarly writing so as to make it manageable both to scholars working across the disciplines of philosophy, classics, history, and politics, and to scholars pursuing theses on specific topics within the Ethics. The bibliography takes as its model and is much indebted to that compiled by Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji in their Articles on Aristotle, Volume 2: Ethics and Politics (1977), which was further updated and incorporated into the complete bibliography to all of Aristotle’s writings in Barnes’s Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995). Although I have taken guidance from their model, my bibliography differs in one main respect. Whereas Barnes et al. were more selective and annotated their bibliography, I have been more comprehensive in my inclusion of items. I have sought to include all books and journal articles concerned with the Ethics written in English over the last 120 years; additionally, I have sought to include representative and central works of scholarship written on the Ethics in French, German, and Italian during the same period of time. (shrink)

Our purpose is to study Aristotle?s solution, in the second book of the Posterior Analytics, for the problem of the apprehension of the principles of science. We attend to the relations between the concepts of induction (epagoge) and intelligence (nous) found in the chapter 19, which seems to confirm that the acquisition of the principles is reached by a process of empirical observation. We examine the method, proposed in chapters 13 to 17, for the right formulation of definitions, which seems (...) to attribute to dialectics the task of finding the principles. Aristotle seems to indicate two different methods ? on one hand, the empirical observation followed by intelligence, on other, the dialectics ? for the apprehension of the principles. Our purpose is to study possible solutions for the problem of the concurrence between these two methods in order to refute as much a strictly empiricist interpretation as a strictly dialectical one. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen and Robert Schwartzkopff have independently suggested (variants of) the following claim, which is a varian of Hume's Principle: -/- When the number of Fs is identical to the number of Gs, this fact is grounded by the fact that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the Fs and Gs. -/- My paper is a detailed critique of the proposal. I don't find any decisive refutation of the proposal. At the same time, it has some consequences which many will (...) find objectionable. (shrink)

This paper presents Aristotle’s method of understanding the first principles of natural things in the Physics I.1 and analyzes the three stages of which this method consists. In the Physics I.1, Aristotle suggests that the natural proper route which one has to follow in order to find out the first principles of natural things is to proceed from what is clearer and more knowable to us to what is more knowable and clear by nature. In the Physics I.1, the terms (...) καθόλου and καθ΄ ἕκαστα are not used in their usual meaning. This paper examines the Physics I.1 in comparison with the Posterior Analytics II. 19 in order to elucidate the meaning of καθόλου in the first chapter of Aristotle’s Physics. Furthermore, it reaches the conclusion that the structure of the natural world to which we belong determines the structure and the form of our knowledge. On the one hand, natural things are composite and, on the other hand, perception is involved in the initial grasping of natural things as composites. Thus, since perceptual knowledge is more accessible to us than any other kind of knowledge it is natural to reach knowledge of simple things, i.e., of the principles, starting our inquiry with the composites. (shrink)

Nossa meta é caracterizar alguns aspectos da metodologia científica utilizada por Aristóteles em algumas passagens dos dois primeiros livros do Sobre o Céu e averiguar quais são os principais recursos a que Aristóteles recorre para descobrir os princípios de sua astronomia e para coletar os dados iniciais astronômicos relevantes. Procuraremos mostrar que, para Aristóteles, embora escassos e imprecisos, os dados observacionais ainda têm preferência em relação aos endoxa astronômicos, o que não impede, porém, o emprego de alguns testes dialéticos para (...) o estabelecimento do conhecimento preliminar relevante para a astronomia. (shrink)

: This paper offers a new interpretation of the first chapter of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and of Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric throughout the treatise. I defend the view that, for Aristotle, rhetoric was a skill in offering the listener ‘proofs’, that is, proper grounds for conviction. His arguments in the opening chapters of the treatise state and defend this controversial, epistemically normative view against the rival views of Gorgias, Thrasymachus and the rhetorical handbook writers, on the one hand, and against those (...) of Plato, on the other. Aristotle defends his view on the basis that rhetoric is a skill in discharging an important role in the state – the role of helping citizens to good publicly-deliberated judgements. (shrink)

I lay out and examine two sharply conflicting interpretations of Aristotle's claims about nous in the De Anima (DA). On the human separability approach, Aristotle is taken to have identified reasons for thinking that the intellect can, in some way, exist on its own. On the naturalist approach, the soul, including intellectual soul, is inseparable from the body of which it is the form. I discuss how proponents of each approach deal with the key texts from the DA, focusing on (...) four of the most important and interesting topics in this area. Two of these topics concern the activity of understanding (noêsis): first, what does Aristotle mean when he claims that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ and, secondly, what role does Aristotle think phantasmata (“images” or “representations”) play in understanding something? Two of the topics concern DA 3.5, one of the most difficult passages in Aristotle's corpus: first, what is the nature and role of the productive intellect (nous poiêtikos) introduced there and, secondly, what are this chapter's implications for the question of whether the intellect or intellectual soul can exist apart from the body? I conclude by identifying areas where further research is necessary. (shrink)

Few arguments from the past have stirred up as much interest as Aristotle’s “Third man” and not so many texts have received as much attention as its account in chapter 22 of the Sophistici elenchi. And yet, several issues about both remain highly controversial, starting from the very nature of the argument at stake and the exact signification of some of its features. The essay provides a close commentary of the text, dealing with its main difficulties and suggesting an overall (...) interpretation of Aristotle’s discussion of the “Third Man” argument. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of epistēmē is foundationalist. In contrast, the web of dialectical argumentation that constitutes justification for scientific principles is coherentist. Aristotle’s account of explanation is structurally parallel to the argument for a foundationalist account of justification. He accepts the first argument but his coherentist accounts of justification indicate that he would not accept the second. Where is the disanalogy? For Aristotle, the intelligibility of a demonstrative premise is the cause of the intelligibility of a demonstrated conclusion and causation is (...) asymmetric. Within the Posterior Analytics itself, Aristotle does not account for this, but elsewhere he develops the resources for doing so: the cause is what acts on a substrate to actualize a potential in that substrate, resulting in the effect. On the other hand, it may well happen that two propositions entail each other, in which case one may as well justify the one on the basis of the other as vice versa. (shrink)

People currently regard justice as the main principle of institutions and society, while in ancient Greek people took it as the virtue of citizens. This article analyzes Aristotle’s virtue of justice in his method of virtue ethics, discussing the nature of virtue, how justice is the virtue of citizens, what kind of virtue the justice of citizens is, and the prospect of the virtue of justice against a background of institutional justice. Since virtue can be said to be a specific (...) individual character, Aristotle also defines the virtue of justice as the character of justice, with which citizens act justly and desire to do what is just. The virtue of justice is also an individual ethical virtue, differing from others for it is at the same time a social ethic. We can call the virtue of justice a “non-individual individual ethical virtue.” It has been explained as between pure altruism and egoism, which is a wrong explanation. John Rawls regards justice as the first virtue of social institutions, challenging Aristotle’s virtue of justice, an assertion which also needs further deliberation. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the role of optimality reasoning in Aristotle’s natural science. By “optimality reasoning” I mean reasoning that appeals to some conception of “what is best” in order to explain why things are the way they are. We are first introduced to this pattern of reasoning in the famous passage at Phaedo 97b8-98a2, where (Plato’s) Socrates invokes “what is best” as a cause (aitia) of things in nature. This passage can be seen as the intellectual ancestor of (...) Aristotle’s own principle, expressed by the famous dictum “nature does nothing in vain but always what is best for the substance from among the possibilities concerning each kind of animal” (Progression of Animals II, 704b12-18). The paper is focused around exploring three questions that arise in connection with Aristotle’s use of this optimality principle: (1) How do we understand the concept of “the best” at work in the principle? (2) How does Aristotle conceive of “the range of possibilities”? And, finally, (3) what role does optimality reasoning play in Aristotle’s natural science? Is it a special form of demonstration in which the optimality principle functions as one of its premises, or is it a heuristic device that helps uncover those causally relevant features of a natural substances that ultimately serve as middle terms in demonstrations? In the final section I return to the comparison between Plato and Aristotle and argue that, while both see the natural world as the product of an optimizing agent and while both see this assumption as licensing a pattern of reasoning that appeals to a certain conception of “the best”, they disagree fundamentally over what the optimization agent is and how it operates. Thus, despite their general agreement, it would be a mistake to think that Aristotle simply took over Plato’s use of optimality reasoning without significant modifications. (shrink)

In De Anima II 5, 417a21-b16, Aristotle makes a number of distinctions between types of transitions, affections, and alterations. The objective of this paper is to sort out the relationships between these distinctions by means of determining which of the distinguished types of change can be coextensive and which cannot, and which can overlap and which cannot. From the results of this analysis, an interpretation of 417a21-b16 is then constructed that differs from previous interpretations in certain important respects, chief among (...) which is its characterization of transitions from first potentiality to first actuality, e.g., learning, not as `ordinary', but rather as acquisitions of natural dispositions or faculties. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Aristotle’s views on natural kinds and the compatibility of pluralism and realism, a topic that has generated considerable interest among contemporary philosophers. I argue that, when it came to zoology, Aristotle denied that there is only one way of organizing the diversity of the living world into natural kinds that will yield a single, unified system of classification. Instead, living things can be grouped and regrouped into various cross-cutting kinds on the basis of objective similarities (...) and differences in ways that subserve the explanatory context. Since the explanatory aims of zoology are diverse and variegated, the kinds it recognizes must be equally diverse and variegated. At the same time, there are certain constraints on which kinds can be selected. And those constraints derive more from the causal structure of the world than from the proclivities of the classifier (hence the realism). This distinguishes Aristotle’s version of pluralistic realism from those contemporary versions (like Dupré’s “promiscuous realism”) that treat all or most classifications of a given domain as equally legitimate and not just a sub-set of kinds recognized by the science that studies it. By contrast, Aristotle privileges scientifically important kinds on the basis of their role in causal investigations. On this picture natural kinds are those kinds with the sort of causal structure that allows them to enter into scientific explanations. In the final section I argue that Aristotle’s zoology should remain of interest to philosophers and biologists alike insofar as it combines a pluralistic form of realism with a rank-free approach to classification. (shrink)

Desperately difficult texts inevitably elicit desperate hermeneutical measures. Aristotle's De Anima, book three, chapter five, is evidently one such text. At least since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, scholars have felt compelled to draw some remarkable conclusions regarding Aristotle's brief remarks in this passage regarding intellect. One such claim is that in chapter five, Aristotle introduces a second intellect, the so-called 'agent intellect', an intellect distinct from the 'passive intellect', the supposed focus of discussion up until this passage.1 This (...) view is a direct descendent of the view of Alexander himself, who identified the agent intellect with the divine intellect.2 Even the staunchest defender of such a view is typically at a loss to give a plausible explanation of why the divine intellect pops into and then out of the picture in the intense and closely argued discussion of the human intellect that goes from chapter four through to the end of chapter seven.3 Revolting against an extravagant postulation of entities, Michael Wedin, for example, has argued with considerable subtlety and ingenuity that there is in fact only one intellect discussed in De Anima.4 This unified intellect is fully capable of being integrated into Aristotle's hylomorphic psychology. In order to make his case, though, Wedin is himself forced (1) to discount the importance of some texts and (2) to interpret others in a way that strains credulity. (shrink)

According to the standard and largely traditional interpretation, Aristotle’s conception of nous, at least as it occurs in the Posterior Analytics, is geared against a certain set of skeptical worries about the possibility of scientific knowledge, and ultimately of the knowledge of Aristotelian first principles. On this view, Aristotle introduces nous as an intuitive faculty that grasps the first principles once and for all as true in such a way that it does not leave any room for the skeptic to (...) press his skeptical point any further. Thus the tradi- tional interpretation views Aristotelian nous as having an internalist justificatory role in Aristotelian epistemology. In contrast, a minority (empiricist) view that has emerged recently holds the same internalist justificatory view of nous but rejects its internally certifiable infallibility by stressing the connection between nous and Aristotelian induction. I argue that both approaches are flawed in that Aristotle’s project in the Posterior Analytics is not to answer the skeptic on internalist justificatory grounds, but rather lay out a largely externalist explication of scientific knowledge, i.e. what scientific knowledge consists in, without worrying as to whether we can ever show the skeptic to his satisfaction that we do ever possess knowledge so defined. (shrink)

How Does the Environment Affect the Person? Mark H. Bickhard invited chapter in Children's Development within Social Contexts: Metatheoretical, Theoretical and Methodological Issues, Erlbaum. edited by L. T. Winegar, J. Valsiner, in press.

References are frequent to Arstotle's emphasis on habit in discussions of moral development. However, the connotation of the term is emaciatingly more limited in scope than the conceptually kindred terms Aristotle used. The historical or cultural factors leading to the change are briefly described. The paper is mainly an attempt to analyze the content of the two terms: Hexisand Disposition and their distinct significance in Aristotle's moral psychology. Past and contemporary thinkers are drawn on to clarify or endorse Aristotle's ideas (...) as well as to suggest their relevance to moral education. (shrink)

(1) If a deductive argument is valid, then the conclusion is not novel. (2) If the conclusion of an argument is not novel, the argument is not useful. So, (3) if a deductive argument is valid, it is not useful. This conclusion, (3), is unacceptable. Since the argument is valid, we must reject at least one premise. So, should we reject (1) or (2)? This puzzle is usually known as the ‘scandal of deduction’. Analytic philosophers have tried to reject (1) (...) but have assumed premise (2). I argue here that Aristotle would deny (2). Aristotle thinks that at least some deductive arguments are useful, even though they present no new conclusions. Thus, Aristotle’s view contrasts with analytic philosophers of logic, who assume that all useful deductive arguments present novel conclusions. I don’t claim that Aristotle ‘solves’ the problem: it was never posed in Aristotle’s time. Rather, I suggest that Aristotle does not face the problem because he assumes deductions can be useful, without presenting novel conclusions. Aristotle’s view of deduction tames the scandal. (shrink)

This paper deals with a seeming contradiction that may seriously impair Aristotle’s definition of the soul in his De Anima. While this definiens has been widely regarded as providing a non-dualistic account of life-functions, grounded in a hylomorphic approach to living beings, Aristotle sticks to an instrumental language vis-à-vis the body, which he consistently refers to as a tool of the soul. It is argued that this philosophical way of talking should be taken at face value, without dismiss- ing it (...) as a stylistic feature or a theoretical hangover from Aristotle’s Platonic days. By paying close attention to the Peripatetic and Neoplatonic reception of the “soul – boatman analogy”, the paper concludes that organic bodies may be considered as instrumental in nature, without this entailing commitment to further individual souls conceived as “users”. (shrink)

How many scientific demonstrations can a single phenomenon have? This paper argues that, according to Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge as laid out in the Posterior Analytics, a single conclusion may be demonstrated via more than one explanatory middle term. I also argue that this model of multiple demonstration is put into practice in the biological writings. This paper thereby accomplishes two related goals: it clarifies certain relatively obscure passages of the Posterior Analytics and uses them to show how Aristotle (...) explains biological phenomena by reference to both final and material causes in the Parts of Animals. The first part of the paper explains the account of multiple demonstration present in the Posterior Analytics and distinguishes it from another kind of plural explanation rejected by Aristotle. The second part of the paper turns to the biological explanation in the Parts of Animals and shows how Aristotle's account of multiple demonstrations works in practice. The paper thus provides evidence for the claim that the ‘applied’ reasoning on display in the biological works is in harmony with the framework of the logical treatises, and thus may also shed light on questions of the unity of the Aristotelian corpus. (shrink)

How does Aristotle think about sentences like ‘Every x is y’ in the Prior Analytics? A recently popular answer conceives of these sentences as expressing a mereological relationship between x and y: the sentence is true just in case x is, in some sense, a part of y. I argue that the motivations for this interpretation have so far not been compelling. I provide a new justification for the mereological interpretation. First, I prove a very general algebraic soundness and completeness (...) result that unifies the most important soundness and completeness results to date. Then I argue that this result vindicates the mereological interpretation. In contrast to previous interpretations, this argument shows how Aristotle’s conception of predication in mereological terms can do important logical work. (shrink)

I believe that there are only a select few topics, which arouse a similar level of interest and curiosity among academics and laymen alike, as does the study of mind and brain. Although mind and brain have been capturing the attention of philosophers for centuries, it is the "scientific investigation" of age old philosophical queries by socalled cognitive scientists, which is distinctive of the developments of the last few decades and which, in times to come, may well be considered the (...) hallmark of the study of mind in the 20th and early 21st centuries. In the past, advances in the natural sciences underlay or boosted a plethora of developments in the technological, economic and political spheres that not only improved the standard of living and prolonged the average life span for a vast number of people, but also fuelled hopes that a new and improved understanding of the nature of man was also within reach. Despite all the benefits mankind derived from scientific and technological progress past and present, the success of the natural sciences also helped spread and foster a virulent and nowadays quasi-ubiquitous and unquestioned believe in the omnipotence of science and technology. In the context of the study of mind, in particular, it fostered the widespread conception that in order for an investigation leading to insight and understanding a "scientific" approach is a sine qua non. This thesis highlights the danger of such an approach. By investigating the framework of explanation adopted by cognitive scientists, the cognitive view, and by examining its inherent conceptions of mind and thought, it will be shown that the scientific, or rather scientistic, approach inherent in the views depicted above is highly questionable, and in the case of the study of mind and brain, does not further insight and understanding, but rather prevents it. In the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein has been one of the few philosophers who recognized the fallaciousness of these ideas and who opposed the inherent scientism. His later philosophy, which provides the philosophical mise en scène for the following investigations, provides a much-needed antidote against the misconceptions common among cognitive scientists today. Although, many of the shortcomings of the ideas and views of cognitive scientists have, with a certain regularity, been discussed by philosophers working in the tradition of the later Wittgenstein their criticisms, more often than not, fell on deaf ears. I believe that one of the main reasons underlying the imperviousness of the community of cognitive scientists to the criticism of the kind of analytic philosophy inspired by the later Wittgenstein, is that it mainly focused on select misconceptions inherent in the cognitive view, but regularly failed to point out their place in the overall framework of thought for cognitive scientists. As a result, it was easy to dismiss these criticisms with excuses of the sort "but that does not bear any direct relevance to the work I do...". For this reason, this thesis aimed to portray and examine the cognitive view in its entirety, i.e. to depict the intricate interconnections existing between the premises that provide the foundation of the cognitive view, and to point out their disastrous consequences for our understanding not only of a select view aspects of mental phenomena, but to our understanding of the mind in its entirety. In order to provide such a "big picture", and to describe the numerous often very subtle interconnections between the various ideas making up the cognitive view in all their breadth and depth, a lot of well-trodden ground had to be revisited and reviewed. Thus, Anthony Kenny's and Peter Hackers' discussions of the mereological fallacy will provide the "base camp" from which we will visit less familiar aspects of the cognitive view via novel routes on our way to the peak of this "philosophical mountain". Where required, my indebtedness to the works of these philosophers will be highlighted throughout the text. (shrink)

Pretendemos averiguar como Aristóteles concebe a passagem do nosso conhecimento prévio do mundo ao conhecimento científico, avaliando os pressupostos e consequências de sua resposta ao paradoxo de Mênon e atentando para a metodologia científica defendida nos Segundos Analíticos. Quanto ao conhecimento preliminar necessário à edificação da ciência, procuraremos caracterizar seus tipos e também os meios pelos quais ele pode vir a ser adquirido por nós. Buscaremos estabelecer também as propriedades que o conhecimento científico deve possuir em relação à sua necessidade, (...) universalidade e caráter explanatório. Buscaremos marcar, com precisão, a natureza da conclusão científica segundo a teoria científica aristotélica, argumentando que, nas conclusões, o atributo demonstrado, em relação com seu substrato, representa uma propriedade por si concomitante. Pretendemos averiguar como os diferentes tipos de demonstração e definição respondem a diferentes estágios de organização do saber prévio e a diferentes estágios na estruturação das demonstrações propriamente científicas, e, por conseguinte, como esses se organizam de modo a responder as quatro perguntas que toda investigação científica deve abarcar em seus dois estágios. (shrink)

Are there atoms in the constitution of things? Or is everything made of atomless ‘gunk’ whose proper parts have proper parts? Anaxagoras is the first gunk lover in the history of metaphysics. For him gunk is not only a theoretical possibility that cannot be ruled out in principle. Rather, it is a view that follows cogently from his metaphysical analysis of the physical world of our experience. What is distinctive about Anaxagoras’s take on gunk is not only what motives the (...) view, but also the particular type of gunk that he develops. It is qualitative gunk, rather than material gunk. Anaxagoras’s ontology was developed before matter was ‘invented’. It includes quality tropes only; they are gunky. The resulting metaphysical view – a world of qualitative gunk – is new, in the sense of being hitherto unexplored; and yet, it is derived from Anaxagoras’s writings. Drawing on Anaxagoras’s insights, this paper offers a sketch of what qualitative gunk ontology l.. (shrink)

I provide a survey of the contents of the works belonging to Aristotle's Organon in order to define their nature, in the light of his declared intentions and of other indications (mainly internal ones) about his purposes. No unifying conception of logic can be found in them, such as the traditional one, suggested by the very title Organon, of logic as a methodology of demonstration. Logic for him can also be formal logic (represented in the main by the De Interpretatione), (...) axiomatized syllogistic (represented in the main by the Prior Analytics) and a methodology of dialectical and rhetorical discussion. The consequent lack of unity presented by those works does not exclude that both the set of works called Analytics and the set of works concerning dialectic (Topics and Sophistici Elenchi) form a unity, and that a certain priority is attributed to the analytics with respect to dialectic. (shrink)

I discuss a short string of five sentences in Metaphysics V.5, 1015b6-9 relating demonstration to necessity. My proposal is that Aristotle focuses his attention on the demonstration as a demonstration. Other interpretations reduce the necessity in question to the modality of the component sentences of the demonstrations (the conclusion and the premises). My view does not deny that the modality of the component sentences is important, but takes seriously the idea that a demonstration itself should be understood as necessary—as not (...) capable of being otherwise. A demonstration cannot be different from what it is in the sense that [i] its components cannot be different from what they are, [ii] its components must be related to each other exactly in the way they are related. Demonstrations aim at the fully appropriate explanation of a given explanandum—and each demonstration is individuated by the explanandum it takes. Thus, the basic idea is that, for the target explanandum that individuates a given demonstration, the premises delivering the fully appropriate explanation cannot be replaces with different ones. I show how this proposal, which explains Aristotle’s language in 1015b6-9 accurately, does not make demonstrations ‘melt down into conditional necessity’, first, because the modality of the component sentences is still importantly involved, second, because the explanatory relation expressed in a demonstration is a necessary fact in the real world, so that the demonstration itself is also necessary (in the way I have explained) inasmuch as it captures that fact. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two passages of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, one in Z 3, the other in H1, in which Aristotle seems to assert that the hupokeimenon is said in three ways, as matter, form, and the compound of matter and form. From these two passages it is often said that subjecthood is a criterion for being substance. A consequence of this is that, if form is to be substance, and form is substance, namely first substance, it has to comply with (...) the subject-criterion. This paper challenges this reading, purporting to show that these two passages need not commit Aristotle to the subject-criterion, and that there are good reasons not to commit him to it. (shrink)

This paper has two components. The first, longer component (sec. 1-6) is a critical exposition of Armstrong’s views about the metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in Truth and Truthmakers and Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. In particular, I discuss Armstrong’s views about the nature of the cardinal numbers, and his account of how modal truths are made true. In the second component of the paper (sec. 7), which is shorter and more tentative, I sketch an alternative account of (...) the metaphysics of mathematics. I suggest we insist that mathematical truths have physical truthmakers, without insisting that mathematical objects themselves are part of the physical world. (shrink)

The Middle Included is a systematic exploration of the meanings of logos throughout Aristotle’s work. It claims that the basic meaning is “gathering,” a relation that holds its terms together without isolating them or collapsing one to the other. This meaning also applies to logos in the sense of human language. Aristotle describes how some animals are capable of understanding non-firsthand experience without being able to relay it, while others relay it without understanding. Aygün argues that what distinguishes human language, (...) for Aristotle, is its ability to both understand and relay firsthand and non-firsthand experiences. This ability is key to understanding the human condition: science, history, news media, propaganda, gossip, utopian fiction, and sophistry, as well as philosophy. Ömer Aygün finds Aristotle’s name for this peculiar but crucial human ability of “gathering” both experiences is logos, and this leads to a claim about the specificity of human rationality and language. (shrink)