Aristotle has repeatedly stated in his works that 'being has several senses'. Is this to be regarded as his pluralistic ontology, an approach that seems to be too nascent? If so, how can this newfound approach in ontology be linked to the ideas of the father of this science, i.e. Aristotle? These are the questions that the present article seeks to answer. First, we will show that Aristotle thinks of 'being' in four senses. Then, step by step he proceeds to (...) leave different senses aside, insofar as only one sense remains: being in the sense of the figures of the categories. We argue, then, that it is better to found Aristotle's ontological pluralism upon the fourfold sorts, instead of the tenfold categories. We will provide some reasons for this preference, i.e. in defense of the fourfold sorts and against the tenfold categories. Each of these four modes of being will be discussed. Finally, a version of ontological pluralism will be provided and attributed to Aristotle: Sorting Version. According to this version of pluralism, we will demonstrate how Aristotle speaks of the ontologically fundamental structure of the world. (shrink)

Aristotle's thesis in Physics I 8 is that a certain old and familiar problem about coming to be can only be solved with the help of the new account of the "principles" he has developed in Physics I 7. This is a strong thesis and the literature on the chapter does not quite do it justice; specifically, as things now stand we are left wondering why Aristotle should have found this problem so compelling in the first place. In this paper (...) I develop an interpretation which will help to remedy this.I believe that Aristotle's problem about coming to be depends on a certain principle to the effect that "nothing can become what it already is" . The main innovation of the interpretation developed here is its suggestion that we understand this principle as a principle about kinds. So understood, the principle does not make the comparatively trivial point that nothing can become any individual it already is, but rather the more powerful and substantive point that nothing can become any kind of thing it already is. I argue that this is a point which Aristotle himself accepts and that this is why the problem about coming to be raises serious difficulties for him. I also discuss Aristotle's proposed solutions to this problem, explaining how each draws on his new account of the principles and why each is required for any full resolution of the difficulties the problem raises. In this way I hope to show how the interpretation developed here does justice to the very strong thesis with which Aristotle begins Physics I 8. I conclude brie fly and somewhat speculatively with a suggestion as to why Aristotle might accept the principle on which I have suggested the problem turns. (shrink)

From the first century BCE onwards, philosophers started to write commentaries on those Aristotle’s treatises that were meant for the internal use of his school. Plato’s works had been commented on already earlier, the first reported commentary originates in the 300s BCE. Commentaries are treatises that follow an object text in a more or less linear fashion. The format was not unknown before the first century BCE but new in extensive philosophical use. This review essay focuses on authors who commented (...) on Aristotle’s works. The commentaries emerged when Platonists and Aristotelians observed the need to teach the philosophy of these ancient masters to their students and to systematise their philosophy to respond to rival schools. In the late ancient schools, Plato and Aristotle were considered great thinkers, whose views needed to be studied carefully when considering any matter at hand. Many also argued that, despite the initial appearance to the contrary, there is no deep disagreement between Plato and Aristotle but, rather, a division of labour; Aristotle is dominant in natural philosophy and Plato in theology. However, this harmony thesis was not universally accepted. Despite their respect for Plato and Aristotle, the commentators were not mere followers of these authors. They developed, criticised and transformed the doctrines in significant ways, not only by suggesting different answers to the same questions but also by transforming the questions themselves. (shrink)

This paper seeks to formulate the idea of subjectless change in the established conceptual scheme, which is so often thought to necessarily exclude it. The idea, first espoused by some pre-Socratic thinkers in the form of the universal flux doctrine, was subsequently abandoned due to its alleged logical incoherence. Its reintroduction in contemporary metaphysics is essentially part of a massive revolt against the established conceptual scheme; it serves as a conceptual tool to reinterpret the world and to represent it in (...) an entirely new picture. In this paper I argue, however, that the idea of subjectless change need not be associated with the dissolution of particulars or the dispensing with the concept of object, a trademark of the revolt; rather its usefulness lies in its explanatory power which renders presenting a more complete picture of the world in the established conceptual scheme possible. (shrink)

Aristotle's thesis in "Physics" I 8 is that a certain old and familiar problem about coming to be can only be solved with the help of the new account of the "principles" he has developed in "Physics" I 7. This is a strong thesis and the literature on the chapter does not quite do it justice; specifically, as things now stand we are left wondering why Aristotle should have found this problem so compelling in the first place. In this paper (...) I develop an interpretation which (I hope) will help to remedy this. I believe that Aristotle's problem about coming to be depends on a certain principle to the effect that "nothing can become what it already is" (it is this that is supposed to explain why τὸ ὄν cannot come to be ἐξ ὄντος -- cf. 191a30). The main innovation of the interpretation developed here is its suggestion that we understand this principle as a principle about kinds. So understood, the principle does not make the comparatively trivial point that nothing can become any individual it already is, but rather the more powerful and substantive point that nothing can become any kind of thing it already is. I argue that this is a point which Aristotle himself accepts and that this is why the problem about coming to be raises serious difficulties for him. I also discuss Aristotle's proposed solutions to this problem, explaining how each draws on his new account of the principles and why each is required for any full resolution of the difficulties the problem raises. In this way I hope to show how the interpretation developed here does justice to the very strong thesis with which Aristotle begins "Physics" I 8. I conclude briefly and somewhat speculatively with a suggestion as to why Aristotle might accept the principle on which I have suggested the problem turns. (shrink)

Both Pierre Duhem and his successors emphasized that medieval scholastics created a science of mechanics by bringing both observation and mathematical techniques to bear on natural effects. Recent research into medieval and early modern science has suggested that Aristotle's subalternate sciences also were used in this program, although the degree to which the theory of subalternation had been modified is still not entirely clear. This paper focuses on the English tradition of subalternation between 1310 and 1350, and concludes with a (...) discussion of the theory advanced by Thomas Claxton early in the fifteenth century. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

Aristotle presents four causes in Posterior Analytics 2.11, but where we expect matter we find instead the confusing formula, ‘what things being the case, necessarily this is the case’, and an equally confusing example. Some commentators infer that Aristotle is not referring to matter, others that he is but in a non-standard way. I argue that APo. 94a20-34 presents not matter, but determination by general features or facts, including facts about something’s genus. The closest connection to matter is Aristotle’s view (...) that the relation between genus and species is analogous to that between matter and a hylomorphic compound. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. When (...) he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (shrink)

The article examines the relevance of Aristotle’s analysis that concerns the syllogistic figures. On the assumption that Aristotle’s analytics was inspired by the method of geometric analysis, we show how Aristotle used the three terms, when he formulated the three syllogistic figures. So far it has not been appropriately recognized that the three terms — the major, the middle and the minor one — were viewed by Aristotle syntactically and predicatively in the form of diagrams. Many scholars have misunderstood Aristotle (...) in that in the second and third figure the middle term is outside and that in the second figure the major term is next to the middle one, whereas in the third figure it is further from it. By means of diagrams, we have elucidated how this perfectly accords with Aristotle's planar and graphic arrangement. In the light of these diagrams, one can appropriately capture the definition of syllogism as a predicative set of terms. Irrespective of the tricky question concerning the abbreviations that Aristotle himself used with reference to these types of predication, the reconstructed figures allow us better to comprehend the reductions of syllogism to the first figure. We assume that the figures of syllogism are analogous to the figures of categorical predication, i.e., they are specific syntactic and semantic models. Aristotle demanded certain logical and methodological competence within analytics, which reflects his great commitment and contribution to the field. (shrink)

The debate about the ontological innocence of mereology has generally been framed as a debate about the plausibility of Universal Fusion. Ontologically loaded fusions must be more than the sum of their parts, and this seems to violate parsimony if fusion is universal. Less attention has been paid to the question of what sort of emergence mereological fusions must exhibit if they are irreducible to their parts. The philosophy of science literature provides several models of such strong emergence. Examining those (...) models suggests that the difficulty with emergent fusions has at least as much to do with extensionality as it does with Universal Fusion. Some accounts of emergence fail to ensure irreducibility when combined with extensional mereologies. The most promising model for the strong emergence of ontologically loaded fusions fails to validate Anti-Symmetry, which naturally leads to failures of extensionality. These results suggest that the focus on Universal Fusion may have been misplaced. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

Ontological separation plays a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysical project: substances alone are ontologically χωριστόν. The standard view identifies Aristotelian ontological separation with ontological independence, so that ontological separation is a non-symmetric relation. I argue that there is strong textual evidence that Aristotle employs an asymmetric notion of separation in the Metaphysics—one that involves the dependence of other entities on the independent entity. I argue that this notion allows Aristotle to prevent the proliferation of substance-kinds and thus to secure the (...) unity of his metaphysical system. (shrink)

I argue that sunyata, or something like it, manifested itself in early Western thought. While Plato and Aristotle resisted emptiness or nothingness, they nevertheless felt themselves obliged to venture close to its edge in order to ground their explanations of changing reality to unchanging principles. These principles embody much of the indeterminancy long associated with the Mahayana understanding of sunyata. Although their function was to enable lasting explanations of reality by putting change out of play, they themselves shade off toward (...) a featureless being evocative of non-being. Moving along a somewhat different track, Greek atomists embraced emptiness so as to permit self-existent, fully self-contained atoms to move about. In their system, non-being, a foundational principle of reality, paradoxically coexists with being. Interestingly, modern science has undone the self-containment of atoms—emptied them of properties once thought to be innate—and thereby removed yet another Western safeguard against change. It seems that change cannot be put out of play, though it does slope off toward sunyata-like emptiness. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant on Aristotle’s logic. The Sections I, II, III, and IV list respectively 23 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. Section I starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article—from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his discovery of Aristotle’s natural deduction system—and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article—from his Buffalo period first reporting his original results. It ends with works published in 2015. (...) Some items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that, in retrospect, are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 10 items published in the 1970s, 24 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 60 in the 2000s, and 70 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally in some cases, even of the Łukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably George Boger, Charles Kahn, John Mulhern, Mary Mulhern, Anthony Preus, Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. (shrink)

JUNE 2015 UPDATE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY: JOHN CORCORAN’S PUBLICATIONS ON ARISTOTLE 1972–2015 By John Corcoran -/- This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications relevant to his research on Aristotle’s logic. Sections I, II, III, and IV list 21 articles, 44 abstracts, 3 books, and 11 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article from Corcoran’s Philadelphia period that antedates his Aristotle studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article from his (...) Buffalo period first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated as listed or with endnotes connecting them with other work and pointing out passages that in-retrospect are seen to be misleading and in a few places erroneous. In addition, Section V, “Discussions”, is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 23 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 69 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is also annotated as listed or with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. Section VI, “Alternatives”, lists recent works on Aristotle’s logic oblivious of Corcoran’s research and, more generally, of the Lukasiewicz-initiated tradition. As is evident from Section VII, “Acknowledgements”, Corcoran’s publications benefited from consultation with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, Roberto Torretti, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in collaboration with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. -/- REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. Also, let me know of passages I should comment on. (shrink)

This presentation includes a complete bibliography of John Corcoran’s publications devoted at least in part to Aristotle’s logic. Sections I–IV list 20 articles, 43 abstracts, 3 books, and 10 reviews. It starts with two watershed articles published in 1972: the Philosophy & Phenomenological Research article that antedates Corcoran’s Aristotle’s studies and the Journal of Symbolic Logic article first reporting his original results; it ends with works published in 2015. A few of the items are annotated with endnotes connecting them with (...) other work. In addition, Section V “Discussions” is a nearly complete secondary bibliography of works describing, interpreting, extending, improving, supporting, and criticizing Corcoran’s work: 8 items published in the 1970s, 22 in the 1980s, 39 in the 1990s, 56 in the 2000s, and 65 in the current decade. The secondary bibliography is annotated with endnotes: some simply quoting from the cited item, but several answering criticisms and identifying errors. As is evident from the Acknowledgements sections, all of Corcoran’s publications benefited from correspondence with other scholars, most notably Timothy Smiley, Michael Scanlan, and Kevin Tracy. All of Corcoran’s Greek translations were done in consultation with two or more classicists. Corcoran never published a sentence without discussing it with his colleagues and students. REQUEST: Please send errors, omissions, and suggestions. I am especially interested in citations made in non-English publications. (shrink)

Aristotle thinks that we understand something when we know its causes. According to Aristotle but contrary to most recent approaches, causation and explanation cannot be understood separately. Aristotle complicates matters by claiming that there are four causes, which have come to be known as the formal, material, final, and efficient causes. To understand Aristotelian causation and its relationship to explanation, then, we must come to a precise understanding of the four causes, and how they are supposed to be explanatory. Aristotle’s (...) discussion of the causes, however, is compact, and he typically presents them without arguing for them. He thus leaves us with a number of questions, ranging from the highly specific to the highly general. One question in particular has captured the attention of scholars and philosophers over the last century, and it has had a strong influence on recent treatments of the four causes – namely, whether we are right to understand Aristotle as committed to a plurality of kinds of causation, or rather a plurality of kinds of explanation. Sometimes the question is raised as one of whether it would be more accurate to speak of the four ‘becauses’ rather than the four ‘causes’. This worry is highly general, and there are in fact several ways in which it might be formulated; nonetheless, it is important to clarify the precise nature of the problem, and the possible ways of responding to it. At issue is not just whether Aristotle’s notions are sufficiently like the modern notion of causation to be relevant to our concerns, but, more importantly, whether the distinctions he draws are ultimately metaphysical or epistemological in character. (shrink)

A lot of words investigated by philosophers get their inception for conventional or extra-philosophical dialect. Yet the idea of substance is basically a philosophical term of art. Its employments in normal dialect tend to derive, often in a twisted way, different from its philosophical usage. Despite this, the idea of substance differs from philosophers, reliant upon the school of thought in which it is been expressed. There is an ordinary concept in play when philosophers discuss “substance”, and this is seen (...) in the concept of object, or thing when this is contrasted with properties, attributes or events. There is also a difference in view when in the sense that while the realists would develop a materialistic theory of substance, the idealist would develop a metaphysical theory of substance. The problem surrounding substance spans through the history of philosophy. The queries have often been what is substance of? And can there be substance without its attributes? This paper tends to expose the historical problems surrounding substance. This paper criticizes the thinking which presupposes that there could be a substance without its attributes or substance existing alone. This paper adopts complimentary ontology principles which state that for anything to exist, it must serve as a missing connection to reality. This suggests that everything interconnects to each other and substance cannot exist in isolation. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z.3 deploys a reductio against the claim that ‘substances underlie by being the subjects of predication’, in order to demonstrate the need for a new explanation of how substances underlie. Z.13 and H.1 corroborate this reading: both allude to an argument originally contained in Z.3, but now lost from our text, that form, matter and compound ‘underlie’ in different ways. This helps explain some of Z’s peculiarities—and it avoids committing Aristotle to self-contradiction about whether (...) matter is substance, a claim denied in the reductio but endorsed elsewhere. (shrink)

"However that may be, Aristotelian syllogistic concerned itself exclusively with monadic predicates. Hence it could not begin to investigate multiple quantification. And that is why it never got very far. None the less, the underlying grammar of Aristotle's logic did not in itself..

In 'Physics' I.7, Aristotle claims that plants and animals are generated from sperma. Since most understood sperma to be an ovum, this claim threatens to undermine the standard view that, for Aristotle, the matter natural beings are generated from persists through their generation. By focusing on Aristotle’s discussion of sperma in the first book of the 'Generation of Animals', I show that, for Aristotle, sperma in the female is surplus blood collected in the uterus and not an ovum. I subsequently (...) argue that, for Aristotle, this blood does persist through the production of the fetus. (shrink)