[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] This paper investigates a particular strategy for establishing the deep connection between metaphysics and logic using Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction and the theory of predication. The decisive move, according to this strategy, is to formulate and interpret the said principle as a metaphysical principle. In this paper, it is argued that: despite the strategy’s initial appeal, a successful argument still needs to be made in order to fully establish that metaphysics and (...) logic are deeply connected, and the theory of predication is more fundamental than the principle of non-contradiction. The main reason for above is that the strategy is prone to a very powerful objection that Aristotle’s criterion of primary substance is inconsistent. The main reason for above is that the principle of non-contradiction itself is best explained using the theory of predication. In addition, it is the theory of predication that does all the important explanatory work in the context of Aristotle’s philosophical theory. (shrink)

According to vitalism, living organisms differ from machines and all other inanimate objects by being endowed with an indwelling immaterial directive agency, ‘vital force,’ or entelechy . While support for vitalism fell away in the late nineteenth century many biologists in the early twentieth century embraced a non vitalist philosophy variously termed organicism/holism/emergentism which aimed at replacing the actions of an immaterial spirit with what was seen as an equivalent but perfectly natural agency—the emergent autonomous activity of the whole organism. (...) Organicists hold that organisms unlike machines are ‘more than the sum of their parts’ and predict that the vital properties of living things can never be explained in terms of mechanical analogies and that the reductionist agenda is doomed to failure. Here we review the current status of the mechanist and organicist conceptions of life particularly as they apply to the cell. We argue that despite the advances in biological knowledge over the past six decades since the molecular biological revolution, especially in the fields of genetics and cell biology the unique properties of living cells have still not been simulated in mechanical systems nor yielded to reductionist—analytical explanations. And we conclude that despite the dominance of the mechanistic–reductionist paradigm through most of the past century the possibility of a twentyfirst century organicist revival cannot be easily discounted. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ. I present Aristotle’s account of the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive states, both perceptual and intellectual. On my interpretation, Aristotle’s account is based around the notion of cognitive powers taking on forms in a special preservative way. Based on this account, Aristotle argues that no physical structure could enable a bodily part or combination of bodily parts to produce or determine the full range of forms that (...) the human intellect can understand. For Aristotle, cognitive powers with bodily organs are always spatiotemporally limited, but the understanding is not. Aristotle claims that our understanding applies to all instances of the thing understood wherever and whenever they exist. On Aristotle’s own account the intellect in its nature is only “potential,” it does not actually possess any form. Thus nothing prevents it from possessing all forms. (shrink)

Recent interpreters portray Aristotle as a Protagorean antirealist, who thinks that colors and other perceptibles do not actually exist apart from being perceived. Against this, I defend a more traditional interpretation: colors exist independently of perception, to which they are explanatorily prior, as causal powers that produce perceptions of themselves. They are not to be identified with mere dispositions to affect perceivers, or with grounds distinct from these qualities, picked out by their subjective effect on perceivers (so-called “secondary qualities”). Rather, (...) they are intrinsic qualities of objects, which are in reality just as they appear to be. At the same time, Aristotle rejects any “simple theory of color” according to which the essence and nature of colors is fully revealed in experience. Although the character of perceptibles as they are experienced is “better known to us,” their essence and nature only comes to be known through a correct theory. (shrink)

This article closely compares the opposing foundations of theoretical philosophy in René Descartes and Ayn Rand. The developmental course of Rand's foundations, with their continual opposition to Descartes, is tracked. Arguments particularly against Descartes are assembled in this article, and the bountiful contemporary scholarship on Descartes is engaged.

This article aims: (1) to introduce the wider philosophy of Aristotle to nurses and healthcare practitioners; (2) to show that Aristotle's philosophical system is an interdependent whole; and (3) to defend its plausibility and usefulness despite its ancient and alien origins.Aristotle's system can be set out as a hierarchy, with metaphysics at the top and methodology running throughout. Beneath metaphysics are the sciences, with theoretical, practical and productive (or craft) sciences in hierarchical order. This hierarchy does not imply that, say, (...) metaphysics is superior to biology or nursing, but rather that metaphysics can be understood without reference to the other two but, as we shall see, not vice versa.Two themes run through Aristotelian philosophy. The first is Aristotle's method of inquiry, central to which is that our starting point is not pure empirical data, but rather current puzzles; complementing this method is a realist philosophy. The second theme is teleology, the understanding of action in the world in terms of ends, as when we say a plant grows roots to reach water and nutrients.Implications for nursing. Good health is the good functioning of the material aspect of humans; flourishing is good functioning of humans per se. The goals of nursing, which are based on health, are subsumed by the overall human goal of flourishing, and this helps us to understand and set boundaries to health care. Two examples illustrate this. The first is that mental illness is strongly within the purview of nursing and health care whereas bad decisions, such as smoking, are only marginally so. The second is ethics, where it is argued that the attempt to describe ethical decision‐making as in addition to and separate from the decisions made within nursing and health care itself cannot be sustained. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that the method outlined and used in Aristotle’s Ethics is an appropriate and credible one to use in bioethics. Here “appropriate” means that the method is capable of establishing claims and developing concepts in bioethics and “credible” that the method has some plausibility, it is not open to obvious and immediate objection. It begins by suggesting why this claim matters and then gives a brief outline of Aristotle’s method. The main argument is made (...) in three stages. First, it is argued that Aristotelian method is credible because it compares favourably with alternatives. In this section it is shown that Aristotelian method is not vulnerable to criticisms that are made both of methods that give a primary place to moral theory (such as utilitarianism) and those that eschew moral theory (such as casuistry and social science approaches). As such, it compares favourably with these other approaches that are vulnerable to at least some of these criticisms. Second, the appropriateness of Aristotelian method is indicated through outlining how it would deal with a particular case. Finally, it is argued that the success of Aristotle’s philosophy is suggestive of both the credibility and appropriateness of his method. (shrink)

The physis and nomos controversy first emerged in ancient Greek thought. This article explores Castoriadis' reactivation of the issues concerned; in particular, his radicalization of Aristotle's conception of physis and nomos. It suggests that nomos appears as multifaceted in his work. However, three key variations may be identified: empirical nomos, normative nomos and generic nomos. Empirical nomos signifies the human creation of laws. It challenges the notion, long held in western philosophy, that Being = being determined. Although all laws are (...) by humans created and thus in one sense autonomous, Castoriadis further distinguishes normatively between those societies which embrace their self-creating and self-transformative capacity and those which obscure it. Normative nomos, then, refers to the autonomous or heteronomous institution of society. The third sense of nomos refers to the creation of form. In this generic sense, it is argued that the debate shifts from the human to the non-human realm; that nomos also manifests itself in the realm of physis. (shrink)

: In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this (...) work is to summarize a systematic analysis of the variety of emergence theories and concepts, elaborated by Achim Stephan. Along the summary of this analysis, we pose fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to ascribe a precise meaning to the term "emergence" in the context of an understanding of semiosis. After discussing a model for explaining emergence based on Salthe's hierarchical structuralism, which considers three levels at a time in a semiotic system, we present some tentative answers to those questions. (shrink)

In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this work (...) is to summarize a systematic analysis of the variety of emergence theories and concepts, elaborated by Achim Stephan. Along the summary of this analysis, we pose fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to ascribe a precise meaning to the term "emergence" in the context of an understanding of semiosis. After discussing a model for explaining emergence based on Salthe's hierarchical structuralism, which considers three levels at a time in a semiotic system, we present some tentative answers to those questions. (shrink)

Being and Time's fundamental ontoogy and existentialism both rest on the A Potiori Claim, which states that originary temporality is, although non-sequential, a genuine and basic concept of time from which we derive our more ordinary, sequential concept of time. In this paper, I develop a new reading and defense of this claim against the readings of William Blattner, which ties originary temporality too tightly to the particular roles and identities we live out and must therefore find Heidegger's project a (...) failure, and Tony Fisher, who implies that our various roles and identities hang together in time in a merely accidental and non-rational way. On my reading, originary temporality is the structure of Dasein's characteristic activity of existential commitment. Through this activity, we each work out, in our own case, what it takes to embody the capacity for sense-making, at all. Here, the non-sequentiality of originary temporality reflects the way in which commitments are revised and sustained through time, while the sequence of nows derives from our need to embody our commitment in a single life that negotiates among the practical demands that our various identities make of us. (shrink)

I shall argue that, according to Aristotle, the knowledge we may attain is profoundly qualified by our status as human knowers. Throughout the corpus, Aristotle maintains a separation of knowledge at the broadest level into two kinds, human and divine. The separation is not complete—human knowers may enjoy temporarily what god or the gods enjoy on a continuous basis; but the division expresses a fact about humanity's place in the cosmos, one that imposes strict conditions on what we may know, (...) with what degree of certainty, and in what areas. While passages bearing on human knowledge are familiar, looking at them collectively and in comparison with certain other well known Aristotelian doctrines may significantly affect how we understand the goals of his philosophy and why our hopes for reaching them must be limited. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8, Aristotle defends a striking view about the good for human beings. According to Aristotle, the single happiest way of life is organized around philosophical contemplation. According to the narrowness worry, however, Aristotle's contemplative ideal is unduly Procrustean, restrictive, inflexible, and oblivious of human diversity. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle has resources for responding to the narrowness worry, and that his contemplative ideal can take due account of human diversity.

Bernadette M Tobin; An Aristotelian Theory of Moral Development, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 195–211, https://doi.

Bernadette M Tobin; An Aristotelian Theory of Moral Development, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 195–211, https://doi.

Adolescents’ and young adults’ practical moral judgments about two interpersonal moral dilemmas, which differed in their moral complexity, were examined using two philosophical frameworks (deontological and consequentialist principles) as tools for psychological analysis. A sample of 234 participants (ages 14–16, 18–19, and 20–21) reasoned about two moral dilemmas, which had been experienced by a subset of adolescents in a pilot study, in two forms: Participants 1) provided open-ended decisions and justification from the perspective of an imagined moral agent and 2) (...) selected a choice from nine fixed reasoning alternatives (half advocating one course and other half advocating the other course of action, plus a relativistic reasoning). The participants’ open-ended responses served as a foundation of coding systems and were analyzed using log-linear analyses, chi-square tests, and a binominal logistic regression. The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods uncovered unexpected but nuanced young people’s moral thinking. Results indicated that female participants were more likely than males to show a unique decision style: “restructuring” of the moral dilemmas/situations, and moral relativism emerged only when asked to select a choice from nine reasoning alternatives and was primarily evidenced among the younger (aged 18–19) female college students. (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)

In this article I look at CR (critical realism)1 as chiefly exhibited in the seminal theory of Ron Bhaskar – in particular, his early theory of transcendental realism. I examine its mechanisms of thought and pick out some difficulties with the theorisation relative to its deployment by OS theorists and relative to recent attempts to deploy CR as a theory which can bridge the fork in the constructivist and realist areas known as a form of ‘divide’ in the discipline (fault (...) line). I also try and attempt a more in-depth philosophical analysis of the ideas of CR to gain an insight into its nature and what it can offer both as an apodictic system of philosophical insights with aspects of a belief system – but also relative to its realist-related claims towards veridical knowledge of kinds. I make comparisons with other theorists and philosophers including Kant, Derrida, Hume and Aristotle. I close with insights into how a closer scrutiny of CR thought as it is entering OS is necessary to understand the evolving nature of the inter-relationship of ontology and the ontic, in relation to the fault line described. (shrink)

According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

Arrhenius and Rabinowicz have argued that Millian qualitative superiorities are possible without assuming that any pleasure, or type of pleasure, is infinitely superior to another. But AR's analysis is fatally flawed in the context of ethical hedonism, where the assumption in question is necessary and sufficient for Millian qualitative superiorities. Marginalist analysis of the sort pressed by AR continues to have a valid role to play within any plausible version of hedonism, provided the fundamental incoherence that infects AR's use of (...) such analysis is removed. But what AR call ‘Millian superiorities’ are never genuine qualitative superiorities in Mill's sense. Mill scholars need to appreciate this point and recognize that the interpretation of qualitative superiorities as infinite superiorities is the only interpretation which is compatible with the text of Mill's Utilitarianism. The continuing failure to appreciate the possibility of infinite superiorities has precluded any adequate understanding of the extraordinary structure of Mill's pluralistic hedonistic utilitarianism. (shrink)

Today, Thomas White (1593–1676) is remembered as the leader of the “Blackloists” – a renegade Catholic group that took its name from White's sometime pseudonym “Blacklo” – and as the friend and phi...

Focusing on the concept of “the moral self” this essay explores relationships between Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and John Dewey’s moral pragmatism and tries to evaluate the extent to which in his work on ethics Aristotle may be considered a pragmatist. Aristotle foreshadows pragmatism, for example, in preferring virtue-based to rule-based ethics, in contending that the moral status of a person’s actions and the nature of the person’s selfhood are interdependent, and in stressing the key role of habits in character formation. (...) Aristotle, however, may seem far from the status of pragmatist when he privileges the life of contemplation and posits a moral self that is more static than the one proposed by Dewey. This essay contends that if more attention is paid to Aristotle’s treatment of friendship and to his highlighting of the need for reciprocity then the moral self that emerges from Nicomachean Ethics becomes more dialectical and more at one with that proposed by the American pragmatist. Aristotle, then, may be regarded as setting Dewey on the path towards a model of moral self that is not only deeply concerned about the lives of others but that is also dependent on others for its own existence. (shrink)

How does the human animal who thinks and loves relate to criminal justice? This essay takes up the idea of a moral psychology of guilt promoted by Bernard Williams and Herbert Morris. Against modern liberal society’s ‘peculiar’ legal morality of voluntary responsibility, it pursues Morris’s ethical account of guilt as involving atonement and identification with others. Thinking of guilt in line with Morris, and linking it with the idea of moral psychology, takes the essay to Freud’s metapsychology in Civilization and (...) Its Discontents. Two conflicting routes to guilt are noted in Freud, one involving internalisation of external anger to suppress destructive instincts, the other loving identification with others in the process of self-formation. This second route is developed through the psychoanalytic thought of Hans Loewald and Jonathan Lear. Following Loewald, the moral psychology of self-formation makes loving identification with others the root of responsibility, guilt and atonement. Following Lear, the moral psychology of guilt developed on these lines renders psychoanalysis part of a broadly understood philosophical project following Aristotelian and Socratic principles. Underlying Morris’s account of guilt is the possibility of ‘prospective identification’, understood as the moral and psychological ground of guilt and reconciliation. This is the rational core of criminal justice, which maintains an uneasy relationship with law’s ‘peculiar’ morality. (shrink)

I defend a new reading of Spinoza's account of causation that reconciles the strengths of the mechanist and formal cause interpretations by locating instances of nature's fixed and unchanging laws inside individual natures; natures are efficacious because that's where the laws are. God's necessity, for instance, follows from certain logical principles contained within God's nature. Causes between finite particulars likewise stem entirely from finite natures. They do so, I argue, because finite instances of nature's fixed and unchanging laws are inscribed (...) within those natures. In each of these instances, effects follow from natures on account of laws contained within them. (shrink)

Is there a particular‐universal distinction? Ramsey famously advocated scepticism about this distinction. In “Some Formal Ontological Relations” E.J. Lowe argues against Ramsey that a particular‐universal distinction can be made out after all if only we allow ourselves the resources to distinguish between the elements of a four‐fold ontology. But in defence of Ramsey I argue that the case remains to be made in favour of either the four‐fold ontology Lowe recommends or the articulation of a particular‐universal distinction within it. I (...) also argue that the case remains to be made against a spatio‐temporal conception of the particular‐universal distinction. (shrink)

Perhaps the real paradox of Zeno's Arrow is that, although entirely stationary, it has, against all odds, successfully traversed over two millennia of human thought to trouble successive generations of philosophers. The prospects were not good: few original Zenonian fragments survive, and our access to the paradoxes has been for the most part through unsympathetic commentaries. Moreover, like its sister paradoxes of motion, the Arrow has repeatedly been dismissed as specious and easily dissolved. Even those commentators who have taken it (...) seriously have propounded solutions with which they profess themselves to be perfectly satisfied. So my question is: will Zeno's Arrow survive into the millennium just begun? (shrink)

Decision-making in health care is often challenging and therefore requires practical wisdom. The domains of such wisdom involve goals, perception, ethics, deliberation, and motivation. For Christian patients, there is a need for practical wisdom founded on Christian commitments that shape and guide these domains according to a Christian understanding of life, health, technology, illness, suffering, and death. In this essay, I outline a Christian approach to practical wisdom in health care by infusing Christian beliefs and values into a general framework (...) for practical wisdom in medicine I have described previously. I organize this approach by referring to Christian purpose, vision, ethics, piety, and practice. The result is a framework that intends to integrate faith and reason so that what we believe as Christians forms how we think about health and guides what we choose or decline when considering the possibilities that come before us in health care. (shrink)

This paper argues that the discussion in which Aristotle engages in Metaphysics ΖΗ has the same starting-point as natural science: the principles of changing substances. These inquiries are nonetheless distinct because natural science uses these principles in its detailed investigations into natural substances, whereas ΖΗ reflect on the principles themselves. ΖΗ are an integral part of Aristotle’s inquiry into the principles of all substances, changing and unchanging: they are not merely preliminary to an inquiry into the latter kind. They are (...) also an integral part of Aristotle’s ‘first philosophy’, alongside theology’s study of the nature and activity of unchanging substances. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

Aristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what (...) Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable oí eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle's natural teleology. (shrink)

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, a state to which an agent’s motivation is central. For anyone interested in Aristotle’s account of moral development this invites reflection on two questions: how is it that virtuous motivational dispositions are established? And what contribution do the moral learner’s existing motivational states make to the success of her habituation? I argue that views which demand that the learner act with virtuous motives if she is to acquire virtuous dispositions misconstrue the nature and structure of (...) the habituation process, but also obscure Aristotle’s crucial insight that the very practice of virtuous actions affords a certain discovery and can be transformative of an agent’s motivational states. Drawing attention, in Aristotle’s account, to an asymmetry between the agential perspective and the observation of others, I consider what the agential perspective affords the learner, and offer a novel interpretation of the role a learner’s existing motives play in her habituation. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

I critically discuss two claims which Hannah Ginsborg makes on behalf of her account of meaning in terms of ‘primitive normativity’: first, that it avoids the sceptical regress articulated by Kripke's Wittgenstein; second, that it makes sense of the thought—central to Kripke's Wittgenstein—that ‘meaning is normative’, in a way which shows this thought not only to be immune from recent criticisms but also to undermine reductively naturalistic theories of content. In the course of the discussion, I consider and attempt to (...) shed light on a number of issues: the structure of the sceptical regress; the content of the thought that ‘meaning is normative’, and its force against reductive theories; the connection between meaning and justification; and the notion of ‘primitive normativity’. (shrink)

Although telos has been important in farm animal ethics for several decades, clearer understanding of it may be gained from the close reading of Aristotle’s primary texts on animals. Aristotle observed and classified animals informally in daily life and through planned evidence gathering and collection development. During this work he theorized his concept of telos, which includes species flourishing and a good life, and drew on extensive and detailed assessments of animal physiology, diet and behaviour. Aristotle believed that animals, like (...) humans, have purpose, and that telos is natural and unchanging. Moreover, he greatly valued the economic, political and defence contributions of farmers to their communities. In his stockperson ethics, animals are ordered to rational human purposes through husbandry, and good practice is established and shared by experience, habituation and training. Aristotle provides a useful and demanding framework for farm animal ethics that goes well beyond negative theories of welfare as freedom from harms. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

Over the last several years a number of leading philosophers – including Catherine Elgin, Linda Zagzebski, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Duncan Pritchard – have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the contemporary focus on knowledge in epistemology and have attempted to “recover” the notion of understanding. According to some of these philosophers, in fact, understanding deserves not just to be recovered, but to supplant knowledge as the focus of epistemological inquiry. This entry considers some of the main reasons why philosophers have taken understanding (...) to be more valuable than knowledge, focusing on claims that it is more transparent, that it better reflects or mirrors the world, and that it is a greater intellectual achievement. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of the relation between Aristotle’s ethics and the crafts (or technai). My thesis is that Aristotle’s argument is at key points shaped by models proper to the crafts, this shaping being deeper than is generally acknowledged, and philosophically more problematic. Despite this, I conclude that the arguments I examine can, if revised, be upheld. The plan of the dissertation is as follows – Preface: The relation of my study to the extant secondary literature; Introduction: The (...) pre-Platonic concept of technē, as evidenced in Greek philosophical and literary sources, in particular the early Hippocratic corpus; Chapter one: The Platonic concept of technē, followed by an investigation of whether Plato affirms a virtue-technē in the Protagoras and Republic; Chapter two: Aristotle’s concept of technē, followed by scrutiny of his arguments in NE VI.5 against a virtue-technē, and of his analyses of slavery and deliberation; Chapter three: An exposition of Aristotle’s function argument, followed by a dominantist interpretation of it, and an explanation of dominantism as in part a technē-influenced doctrine; Chapter four: An examination of Aristotle’s ethical mean and its problems, with a diagnosis of these in terms of influence by the Philebus, and by paradigms derived from the crafts; Chapter five: Argument that Aristotle’s theory of habituation suffers from two significant opacities, these being a function of influence both by the Republic, and by models of craft-learning; Conclusion: Response to key objection; Aristotle’s ethics revised, defended. (shrink)

Neste trabalho, avaliamos as implicações que o debate filosófico acerca das explicações em termos de função e objetivo podem ter no contexto educacional, particularmente no ensino e aprendizagem de biologia. Para alcançar este objetivo, investigamos como três obras didáticas de biologia do Brasil utilizam a linguagem teleológica na formulação de explicações para os assuntos que são objeto de estudo dessa ciência. Na análise das obras, exploramos os enunciados teleológicos e funcionais a partir de dois projetos explanatórios discutidos na filosofia da (...) biologia contemporânea, a saber: (i) etiológico, que fornece uma abordagem essencialmente histórica de explicação biológica; e (ii) organizacional, que orienta o estudo acerca das capacidades de sistemas complexos mediante o apelo às funções de seus componentes, ou seja, a contribuição das partes para a realização de uma capacidade global. Nossos resultados mostram que poucas explicações podem ser qualificadas como etiológicas, em razão de que os autores preterem a discussão de temas segundo um tratamento evolutivo. Associado a esse resultado, a maioria dos enunciados foi localizada no contexto do projeto organizacional de explicação científica. Na análise das explicações, destacamos os principais problemas que elas apresentam, como a falta de clareza na identificação do explanandum e explanans, situação que pode prejudicar a compreensão dos assuntos pelos estudantes. Por fim, colocamos que a recontextualização das duas abordagens centrais sobre as explicações funcionais na filosofia da biologia, a perspectiva etiológica e a organizacional, podem fornecer um embasamento epistemológico consistente para as explicações biológicas no ensino médio. (shrink)

A discussão nos livros dos Tópicos giram em torno dos debates dialéticos e seus elementos. Aristóteles discorre sobre os gêneros, as propriedades e os chamados acidentes e suas relações predicativas em categorias. Interessa-nos, sobretudo, compreender o papel desempenhado pela Definição e qual sua relação com os demais instrumentos para a dialética.