Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I argue (...) that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

The primary interpretative challenge for understanding Parmenides’ poem revolves around explaining both the meaning of, and the relationship between, its two primary sections: a) the positively endorsed metaphysical arguments which describe some unified, unchanging, motionless, and eternal “reality”, and b) the ensuing cosmology, which incorporates the very principles explicitly denied in Aletheia. I will refer to this problem as the “A-D Paradox.” I advocate resolving this paradoxical relationship by reading Parmenides’ poem as a ring-composition, and incorporating a modified version of (...) Palmer’s modal interpretation of Aletheia. On my interpretation, Parmenides’ thesis in Aletheia is not a counter-intuitive description of how all the world must truly be, but rather a radical rethinking of divine nature. Understanding Aletheia in this way, the ensuing “cosmology” can be straightforwardly rejected as an exposition of how traditional, mythopoetic accounts have misled mortals in their understanding of divinity. Not only does this interpretative view provide a resolution to the A-D Paradox, it offers a more holistic account of the poem by making the opening lines of introduction integral to understanding Parmenides’ message. By setting forth its own unacceptable fiction, paralleling the elements of the Doxa in a ring-composition, the Proem simultaneously establishes the scope of the ensuing inquiry, and its target. Maintaining Parmenides’ historical position as the “father of metaphysics,” the narrative that he advanced a strictly secular account of all reality is challenged. Instead, Parmenides is best understood as further advancing Xenophanes’ criticisms of traditional religion, an intellectual relationship which the ancient testimonia strongly supports. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of the relationship between extended Leibnizian bodies and unextended Leibnizian monads, an account that shows why Leibniz was right to see intimate, explanatory connections between his studies in physics and his mature metaphysics. The first section sets the stage by introducing a case study from Leibniz's technical work on the strength of extended, rigid beams. The second section draws on that case study to introduce a model for understanding Leibniz's views on the relationship between derivative (...) and primitive forces. The third section draws on Leibniz's understanding of the relationship between derivative and primitive forces in order to shed light, in turn, on his understanding of the relationship between extended, material bodies and unextended, immaterial monads. The fourth section responds to a likely objection by arguing that Leibniz's monads may, in a perfectly reasonable sense, be spatially located. (shrink)

This book aims to develop certain aspects of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning, especially those relevant to intensional logic. It offers a new interpretation of the nature of senses, and attempts to devise a logical calculus for the theory of sense and reference that captures as closely as possible the views of the historical Frege. (The approach is contrasted with the less historically-minded Logic of Sense and Denotation of Alonzo Church.) Comparisons of Frege’s theory with those of Russell and others (...) are given. It is in the end shown that developing Frege’s theory in these ways reveals serious problems hitherto largely unnoticed, including those possibly rendering a Fregean intensional logic inconsistent even if his naïve class theory is excluded. (shrink)

According Leibniz's thesis of universal expression, each substance expresses the whole world, i.e. all other substances, or, as Leibniz frequently states, from any given complete individual notion (which includes, in internal terms, everything truly attributable to a substance) one can "deduce" or "infer" all truths about the whole world. On the other hand, in Leibniz's view each (created) substance is internally individuated, self-sufficient and independent of other (created) substances. What may be called Leibniz's expression problem is, how to reconcile these (...) views with each other, that is, how a substance that expresses the whole world, even in the sense that the whole world can be "inferred" from its complete individual notion, can be self-sufficient and internally individuated. The purpose of this paper is to give an exact account of this tricky problem of universal expression, an account that retains substances' self-sufficiency under the constraint that all truths about the whole world are to be obtained from complete individual notions. It will also be shown how the explication of universal expression to be given accounts for Leibniz's thesis of universal change, i.e. the view that any change in any substance is reflected as a real, internal change in each and every other substance. (shrink)

The paper examines the ramifications of naturalism with regard to the question of individuality in economics and biology. Economic theory has to deal with whether households, firms, and states are individuals or are mere entities such as clubs, networks, and coalitions. Biological theory has to deal with the same question with regard to cells, organisms, family packs, and colonies. To wit, the question of individuality in both disciplines involves three separate problems: the metaphysical, phenomenist, and ontological. The metaphysical problem is (...) concerned with purposeful action: Is the firm or organism exclusively the product of efficient causality (optimization) or is it motivated by final causality (purposefulness)? The phenomenist problem is interested in the substantiality of essences: Is the firm''s or organism''s scheme of institutions/traits deep or is it extraneous to identity? The ontological problem is related to the issue of reductionism: Is the behavior of lower-level organization governed by a pre-constituted entities or is it context-sensitive? The paper finds that theoretical differences run along the naturalist/anti-naturalist divide rather than along disciplinary specialization. Also, the paper finds that it is not inconsistent for the same theorist to be naturalist with regard to one problem and anti-naturalist with respect to the other two problems. (shrink)

While operators for logical necessity and possibility represent "internal" conditions of propositions (or of their corresponding states of affairs), These conditions will be "formal", As is required by logical atomism, And not "material" in content if from the (pseudo) semantical point of view the modal operators range over "all the possible worlds" of a logical space rather than over arbitrary non-Empty sets of worlds (as is usually done in modal logic). Some of the implications of this requirement are noted and (...) though several variants of realist logical atomism are distinguished and discussed, The theory of logical form developed is nominalist. Many of nominalism's difficulties and inadequacies become transparent in the context of logical atomism and are so noted. (shrink)

In his Metaphysics Δ 25, 1023b24–5 Aristotle juxtaposes 'to genos tou eidous meros' and 'to eidos tou genous meros' by saying that the genus is a part of the form in a different way (allōs) than the form is a part of the genus. The author of the article considers how to interpret the word 'allōs' and argues for the idea that the contrast marked by 'allōs' reveals two different meanings of 'meros', in each case expressing a different relation of (...) parthood. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has long argued that Frege is committed to recognizing a distinction between two sorts of analysis of propositional contents: 'analysis', which reveals the entities that one must grasp in order to apprehend a given propositional content; and 'decomposition', which is used in recognizing the validity of certain inferences. Whereas any propositional content admits of a unique ultimate 'analysis' into simple constituents, it also admits of distinct 'decompositions', no one of which is ultimately privileged over the others. I argue (...) that although Russell accepts this distinction between analysis and decomposition, Frege does not. In particular, I consider claims which Dummett makes regarding how 'analysis' and 'decomposition' are related to two different models Frege at least suggests in discussing the composition of thoughts, the part/whole model and the function/argument model; and I argue that in each case, while Russell accepts views which Dummett attributes to Frege, Frege does not. (shrink)

Antiphasis is a case of core-dependent homonymy, and has three significations in Aristotle's philosophy: antiphasis as an opposition between propositions ; antiphasis as the opposition between ‘subject’ and ‘not a subject’ in coming-to-be and perishing ; and antiphasis as the opposition between possession and privation . Argument based on the fifth type of priority described in Cat. 12 shows that, for Aristotle, the ontological significations are prior to the propositional.

Joan Weiner has recently claimed that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth-predicate in his justification of the logical laws. She argues that because of the assimilation of sentences to proper names in his system, Frege does not need to make use of the Quinean device of semantic ascent in order to formulate the logical laws, and that the predicate ‘is the True’, which is used in Frege's justification, is not to be considered as a truth-predicate, (...) because it does not apply to true sentences or true thoughts. The present paper aims to show that Frege needs to use, and does use, a truth-predicate in this context. It is argued, first, that Frege needs to use a truthpredicate in order to show that the truth of the logical laws is evident from the senses of the sentences by means of which they are formulated, and second, that the predicate that he actually uses, ‘is the True’, must be considered as a truth-predicate in the relevant sense, because it can be used and is actually used by Frege to explain the truth-conditions of thoughts. To defend this interpretation, it is discussed whether the explanatory use of ‘is the True’ in Frege's system is compatible with his deflationary analysis of ‘true’. The paper's conclusion is that there is indeed a conflict here; but, from Frege's point of view, this conflict is due merely to the logical imperfection of natural language and does not affect the proper system but only its propaedeutic. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 60, Issue 1, pp 3 - 39 This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa. It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa, his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa’s investigations and to those in Alētheia, and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even appropriate aspect (...) of mortal life. The mortal agent, however, is nonetheless capable of sustaining the cognition of Alētheia by momentarily coming to think with—or as—his divine soul. (shrink)

Resumen En el presente trabajo analizo el concepto de cuerpo en los escritos maduros de Leibniz. En el marco del debate contemporáneo acerca del estatus de la sustancia corpórea examino el entramado de las tres nociones sobre las que se construye la metafísica leibniziana de los cuerpos, a saber, la de materia prima, la de cuerpo orgánico y la de extensión. En cada caso evalúo el estatus ontológico que Leibniz les reconoce así como el papel que cumplen en su metafísica.In (...) this paper I examine the concept of body in Leibniz’s mature writings. In the context of the contemporary debate on the status of the corporeal substance, I analyze the relation between the three notions from which he builds his metaphysics of bodies, namely, the primary matter, the organic body, and the extension. For each case I evaluate their ontological status and the role they play in his metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explores the paradox of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory where the notion of "critical theory" became identified with aesthetics and asks whether the disappearance of the political dimension of critical theory was necessary.This disappearance of the political also presents some uncomfortable affinities between it and postmodernism. But in the more sober world after 1989, post-communism poses more relevant questions than post-modernism for an assessment of the history of the Frankfurt School.The political project of the old Frankfurt School has (...) to be revivified - or at least given a decent burial. (shrink)