A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

This paper develops a novel interpretation of Dasein, as we find it in Heidegger’s Being and Time. On this interpretation, Heidegger models this most famous of all his concepts after Aristotle’s account of the soul from De Anima as isomorphic with whatever it currently cognises. Indeed, Dasein proves central to the inquiry into Being he attempts in that book precisely because, like soul, it is capable of becoming like all beings.

Aristotle is believed to have introduced the focal meaning of friendship in Eudemian Ethics VII.2 and then to have formulated it more generally in Metaphysics Γ.2. Bonitz’s unjustifiable emendation of the text underscores these interpretations. This paper therefore reads the MSS and supposes that the EE passage introduces a wider focal meaning based on the theory presented in the Categories, one that does not imply referential relationships between the primary and secondary terms. This wider focal meaning can help explain disputed (...) terms in practical philosophy, such as “friendship” and “like-mindedness,” without invoking the Form of the Good. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of the virtue of justice has been regarded as one of the least successful aspects of his ethics. Among the most serious criticisms lodged against his views are (i) that he fails to identify the proper subject matter of justice (LeBar 2020), (ii) that he wrongly identifies the characteristic motives relevant for justice and injustice (Williams 1980), and (iii) that his account is parochial, i.e., that it fails to correctly recognize or characterize our obligations of justice to those (...) outside our community (Annas 1995; Curzer 2012). Indeed, Mark LeBar has recently argued that, although Aristotle’s eudaimonist framework remains the most promising metaethical strategy to ground justice as a virtue of individual human beings, the normative content of his theory is so flawed that neo-Aristotelians ought to adopt a Kantian theory of justice that centers on according respect to persons (LeBar 2020). My aim in this paper is to defend Aristotle’s views from these criticisms in order to show that it holds promise as an account of justice as a virtue. Notably, neo-Aristotelians have generally neglected the topic of justice, despite its centrality to Aristotle’s ethics and to our own social lives. I argue that they ought to take Aristotle’s account seriously as a starting point for their own theorizing, while recognizing that it needs modification on some points. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson is increasingly recognised as an important predecessor of ordinary language philosophy. He emphasizes the authority of ordinary language in philosophical theorizing. At the same time, however, he circumscribes the limits of that authority and identifies cases in which it threatens to mislead us. My aim is to consider in detail one case where, according to Cook Wilson, ordinary language has misled philosophical theorizing. Judgement was one of the core notions of the logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind (...) of Cook Wilson’s time. Cook Wilson rejects this notion, in the form developed by his contemporaries, in part because it is based on a problematic analogy between ordinary language and the thoughts expressed in that language. Cook Wilson’s discussion of judgement also highlights the extent to which Cook Wilson was critical of, but also responsive to, his contemporaries. In addition, variants of the language-thought analogy Cook Wilson opposes continue to feature in 21st century epistemology and philosophy of mind. Cook Wilson’s criticism of the analogy thus raises questions about recent work as well as the theories of his contemporaries. (shrink)

Discussions of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z tend to treat it either as an independent treatise on substance and essence or as preliminary to the main conclusions of the Metaphysics. I argue instead that Z is central to Aristotle’s project of first philosophy in the Metaphysics: the first philosopher seeks the first causes of being qua being, especially substances, and in Z, Aristotle establishes that essences or forms are the first causes of being of perceptible substances. I also argue that the centrality (...) of Z to first philosophy is compatible with its status as theology. (shrink)

In this paper I provide support for the view that at least some forms of adversariality in argumentation are legitimate. The support comes from Aristotle’s theory of illegitimate adversarial argumentation in dialectical contexts: his theory of eristic in his work On Sophistical Refutations. Here Aristotle develops non-epistemic standards for evaluating the legitimacy of dialectical procedures, standards which I propose can be understood in terms of the pragmatic notion of context as common ground. Put briefly, Aristotle makes the answerer’s meaning in (...) giving assent in dialectical contexts the basis for further moves in the game of dialectic. Moves which subvert the answerer’s meaning or do not solicit the answerer’s consent are marked as eristic, i.e. adversarial in a problematic sense. I conclude with remarks on what Aristotle’s theory may teach us about how semantic features relate to the normative evaluation of argumentation. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this (...) inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (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)

Teleology is the study of ends and goals, things whose existence or occurrence is purposive. Aristotle’s views on teleology are of seminal importance, particularly his views regarding biological functions or purposes. This article surveys core examples of Aristotle’s invocations of teleology; explores philosophically puzzling aspects of teleology (including their normativity and the fact that ends can, apparently, act as causes despite never coming to exist); articulates two of Aristotle’s arguments defending commitment to teleology against critics who attempt to explain nature (...) solely through appeal to nonteleological efficient and material causes; and argues that Aristotle was an ontological realist when it came to teleology: he conceived of ends as an irreducible and ineliminable aspect of the causal structure of reality. Other interpretive controversies are addressed more briefly. (shrink)

The notion of homonymy has been of perennial philosophical interest to scholars of Aristotle from ancient Greek commentators to modern thinkers. Across historical periods, certain issues have remained central, such as the nature of Aristotelian homonymy, its relation to synonymy and analogy, and whether the concept undergoes change throughout the corpus. In addition, fundamental questions concerning the use of homonymy in regard to dialectical practice and scientific inquiry are raised and discussed. It is argued that there are two aspects to (...) Aristotelian homonymy, negative and positive in function, which provide complementary roles in regard to dialectic and science. (shrink)

This paper differentiates between two readings of Aristotle’s argument that unity and being are not “genē” (UBANG for short). On the first reading – proposed by commentators such as Ackrill, Shields, Loux, and McDaniel – UBANG entails the proposition that there are no features that characterise all beings insofar as they are, referred to by its contemporary proponents, including McDaniel, as ‘ontological pluralism’. On the second reading – proposed here – UBANG does not entail this proposition. The paper argues that (...) only on the second reading does Aristotle’s argument secure its conclusion, that the second reading is, in fact, the correct reading of UBANG, and that anyone who thinks that UBANG succeeds and entails ontological pluralism probably equivocates between two different senses of ‘genos’. (shrink)

Typically, Aristotle’s notion of an accidental unity is explained using our concept of identity, but doing so is fraught and liable to mislead. I argue that we should explain accidental unities in terms of sameness: doing so not only shows a coherence among texts thought to be in tension with one another, it reconciles the two competing conceptions of accidental unities in a satisfying way. I conclude by answering several Boolean questions that naturally arise in response to the inclusion of (...) accidental unities in Aristotle’s ontology. (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)

This study investigates the problem of the natural universal in the works of Mullā Ṣadrā. The problem of universals made its way into Arabic/Islamic philosophy via its Greek sources, and was transformed into the problem of natural universals by Avicenna. Weighing in on this problem, Ṣadrā reinterprets the nature of natural universals against the backdrop of his doctrine of “the primacy of being.” As he argues, a natural universal or quiddity qua quiddity is an “accidental being” that requireswujūdfor its existentiation. (...) Thus, Ṣadrā re-envisions the status of natural universals by stripping them of their disputed status as independently existing entities.RésuméDans cette étude je me propose de réfléchir sur le problème de l'universel naturel dans l’œuvre de Mullā Ṣadrā. Le problème des universaux s'est introduit dans la philosophie arabe et musulmaneviales sources grecques et s'est trouvé transformé en celui des “universaux naturels” aux mains d'Avicenne. En contribuant à son tour à l’évolution de ce problème, Ṣadrā réinterpréta le statut des universaux naturels à partir de sa propre doctrine de la “primauté de l’être”. Selon lui, un universel naturel ou “quiddité en tant que quiddité” est un “être par accident” qui requiertwujūdpour son existentiation. Ainsi, Ṣadrā re-envisage le statut des universaux naturels en les privant de leur statut contesté en tant qu'entités “indépendantes existantes”. (shrink)

This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises. Its main purposes are, first, to determine the function, structure, and explanatory power of teleological explanations in four of Aristotle’s natural treatises, that is, in Physica (book II), De Anima, De Partibus Animalium (including the practice in books II-IV), and De Caelo (book II). Its second purpose is to confront these findings about Aristotle’s practice in the natural treatises with (...) the theoretical picture of the structure of teleological explanations gained from Aristotle’s theory of scientific demonstration. For this purpose a new interpretation of Analytica Posteriora II.11 is presented. This study thereby contributes to recent scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s philosophy of science and his philosophy of nature, while at the same time adding to our knowledge of Aristotle’s notion of teleology in terms of its explanatory merits and limits. (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)

Aristotle’s Meteorology 4.12 is puzzling, in part because the chapter appears to extend teleological explanation to include certain inorganic materials without natural biological functions, such as metals and stone. This paper examines two attempts to explain why such materials can have functions, and shows that they are problematic. As an alternative, I argue that raw inorganic materials—as well as separated parts of organisms—can have extrinsic functions. Extrinsic functions can explain why natural inorganic materials can be sorted into natural kinds, even (...) if their functions are ultimately related to their uses in the productive arts. (shrink)

I offer a new analysis of Aristotle's concept of an accidental cause. Using passages fromMetaphysics Δ and Ε, as well as Physics II, I argue that accidental causes are causally inert. After defending this reading against some objections, I draw some conclusions about Aristotle's basic understanding of causation.

Philosophers today have largely given up on the project of categorizing being. Aristotle’s ten categories now strike us as quaint, and no attempt to improve on that effort meets with much interest. Still, no one supposes that reality is smoothly distributed over space. The world at large comes in chunks, and there remains a widespread intuition, even among philosophers, that some of these chunks have a special sort of unity and persistence. These, we tend to suppose, are most truly agents (...) and subjects, and are what exist in the most proper sense of the term. We believe, in other words, in substances. (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)

The essence of artefacts is typically taken to be their function: they are defined in terms of the goals or aims of the artisans that make them. In this paper, an alternative theory is proposed tha...

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)