I argue for a new construal of Aristotle’s definition of anagnorisis (recognition) in Poetics 11. Virtually all translators and interpreters of the definition have understood the phrase ton pros eutuchian e dustuchian horismenon as a subjective genitive characterizing the persons involved in the recognition. I argue that it should instead be taken as a partitive genitive characterizing the genus of changes (metabolon) of which recognitions are a species. In addition to being preferable on philogical grounds, the construal I recommend helps (...) illuminate the relation between recognition and reversal (peripeteia) and makes sense of Aristotle’s views about the relative values of various kinds of recognition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:I argue that there are, according to Aristotle, two importantly different kinds of goals or ends in the domain of human agency and that one of these two kinds has been frequently, though not universally, overlooked. Apart from psychological goals, goals that agents adopt as their purposes, there are also, I submit, goals that actions have by being the kinds of actions they are and, in some cases, by occurring in the circumstances in which they do. These latter goals belong (...) to suitable actions whether or not agents adopt them as purposes and whether or not agents are aware of them. There is evidence both in Aristotle's ethical writings and in his discussion of chance and luck in Physics II.4–6 that he recognizes goals of this latter kind. (shrink)

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.

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)

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)

Aristotle introduces Physics I as an inquiry into principles; in this paper I ask where he argues for the position he reaches in I 7. Many hold that his definitive argument is found in the first half of I 7 itself; I argue that this view is mistaken: the considerations raised there do not form the basis of any self-standing argument for Aristotle's doctrine of principles, but rather play a subordinate role in a larger argument begun in earnest in I (...) 5. This larger argument stalls in I 6, which ends in aporta; I argue that the problem lies in the fact that Aristotle's reasoning in I 6 thoroughly undermines his reasoning in I 5 (on which I 6 is ostensibly supposed to build). I further argue that the materials necessary for resolving this problem, and thereby allowing the argument begun in I 5 to reach its proper conclusion, are supplied by the thesis that organizes the first half of I 7. Along the way I offer some remarks about Aristotle's doctrine of principles, arguing that it is about the principles of natural substance (as opposed to coming to be or change). I also offer some remarks about the thesis which organizes the first half of I 7.1 argue negatively that it is not anything like a preliminary statement of Aristotle's doctrine of principles. I argue positively that it reflects Aristotle's idea that there are two distinct kinds of effect change has upon things (one constructive, the other destructive). One of these effects lies behind Aristotle's reasoning in I 5, the other comes to the fore in 16; the achievement of the first half of I 7 is to reconcile these seemingly competing conceptions by finding a place for them both in a unified account of coming to be and its subjects. (shrink)

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. (...) It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach. 1 An earlier, and fuller, version of this paper was presented at the international conference “Supervenience, Causality, Mind and Action”, Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille 1), Aix-en-Provence, 9-11 May 1999. I would like to thank Thorsteinn Gylfason, Logi Gunnarsson, Torfi Sigurdsson, Andri Björnsson and Lynne Rudder Baker for their helpful comments and criticisms. My research on causality and explanation, which forms the background for this paper, has been supported by the Icelandic Council of Science and the Research Fund of the University of Iceland. (shrink)

The distinction between acting and suffering underlies any theory of agency. Among contemporary writers, Fred Dretske is one of the few who has attempted to explicate this distinction without restricting the notion of action to intentional action alone. Aristotle also developed a global account of agency, one which is deeper and more detailed than Dretske's, and it is to Aristotle's account (with some modifications) that the bulk of this paper is devoted. Dretske's sketchier theory faces at least two ground-level problems. (...) It is shown in the course of the paper how these can be handled by the Aristotelian account, in a way which is friendly to Dretske's approach. (shrink)

According to the aspect theory of instantiation, a particular A instantiates a universal B if and only if an aspect of A is cross-count identical with an aspect of B. This involves the assumption that both particulars and universals have aspects, and that aspects can mediate between different ways of counting things. I will ask what is new about this account of instantiation and, more importantly, whether it is an improvement on its older relatives. It will turn out that the (...) part of it that is new is the notion of cross-count identity among aspects. As I will show, this notion is both dubious and unnecessary. I will end by presenting a simplified aspect theory of instantiation that does not involve cross-count identity. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone examinar la concepción aristotélica del ‘ahora’, tal como se presenta en Física IV 10-14. La autora argumenta que en las dos cuestiones que Aristóteles aborda ahí el ahora se comprende como límite interno del tiempo, una comprensión en la que el énfasis principal está puesto en la condición de indivisibilidad de tal límite o, dicho de otra manera, en el hecho de que el ‘ahora’ no es parte del tiempo. Baño se concentra en una analaogía presentada (...) por Aristóteles para dar cuenta de la difícil tesis de que el ‘ahora’ es siempre el mismo y, al mismo tiempo, siempre diferente. La cuestión en la que la autora está especialmente interesada es el hecho de que el móvil no parece ser al movimiento lo mismo que el ‘ahora’ es al tiempo, dado que el móvil no es un límite interno del movimiento. Consecuentemente, la analogía no puede basarse en la condición puntual del ‘ahora’ y, más bien, parece basarse en el hecho de que el ‘ahora’ es un principio de cognoscibilidad del tiempo, tal como el móvil es un principio de cognoscibilidad del movimiento. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago Paul Wilpert called for a thorough re-examination of our knowledge of the content of Aristotle's lost workDe Philosophia. Expressing his reservations about the validity of our current reconstruction of the work, he wrote: ‘On the basis of attested fragments, we form for ourselves a picture of the content of a lost writing, and this picture in turn serves to interpret new fragments as echoes of that writing. So our joy over the swift growth of our collection of (...) fragments is clouded by the thought that we are not thereby really nearing the original character of the work, but we are entangling ourselves ever more tightly in a picture we ourselves have created.’ As a corrective Wilpert called for a critical retracing of our steps since 1830 to establish a more secure reconstruction of this important lost work.Since then there have been numerous, searching analyses of the ideas and fragments ofDe Philosophia, but at least one venerable old theory has escaped critical reappraisal: namely, the theory that inDe PhilosophiaAristotle discussed his doctrine of a fifth element, i.e. his belief that the heavenly bodies are composed of an element distinct from the four earthly elements, earth, water, air, and fire. This theory has become so widely accepted that it has virtually become a fact. When support is needed, most modern authors simply cite one or both of the two modern authorities on the early Aristotle, namely W. Jaeger and E. Bignone. The more meticulous restate the traditional evidence with complete confidence that this evidence proves their case. If Wilpert's hope for a firmly grounded reconstruction of theDe Philosophiais ever to be achieved, one of the importantdesideratatoday is a critical re-examination of the evidence for the fifth element in this work. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Aristotle operates with a particular theoretical model in his explanation of animal locomotion, what we call the ‘centralized incoming and outgoing motions’ model. We show how the model accommodates more complex cases of animal motion and how it allows Aristotle to preserve the intuition that animals are self-movers, without jeopardizing his arguments for the eternity of motion and the necessary existence of one eternal unmoved mover in Physics VIII. The CIOM model helps to elucidate (...) Aristotle’s two central yet problematic claims, namely that the soul is the efficient cause of animal motion and that it is the internal supporting-point necessary for animal motion. Moreover, the CIOM model helps us to explain the difference between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary motions, and to square Aristotle’s cardiocentrism with his hylomorphism, but also, more generally, it provides an interesting way of thinking about the place of intentionality in the causal structure of the world. (shrink)

In this article, I restate the interpretation of Aristotle’s Ph. 2.5, 196b17– 21, which I presented for the first time in my book I fondamenti della causalità naturale. According to my reading, both the things that are due to deliberation and those that are not fall within the group of beings which come to be not for the sake of anything. In his recent book, Aristotle’s Concept of Chance, John Dudley found my interpretation laudable and original but rejected it, opting (...) for the traditional interpretation. As he did not provide sufficient reasons for this, I deem it appropriate to discuss more broadly and in greater detail my interpretation in order to demonstrate that it is correct theoretically, linguistically and grammatically. I also discuss a reading of Neoplatonic commentators which seems to me very useful: when commenting on Aristotle, they start with a very prejudicial interpretation which comes from Alexander and which probably determined all later interpretations of the passage. According to this interpretation, beings which come to be not for the sake of anything are beings that have no teleology of any kind. Yet this exegetic position faces a series of difficulties which can easily be solved if one assumes, as I do, that these beings have a certain end albeit not an intrinsic one. (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.

_ Source: _Volume 60, Issue 1, pp 88 - 126 The dominant interpretation of Metaphysics Θ.8 commits Aristotle to the claim that the heavenly bodies’ eternal movements are not the exercises of capacities. Against this, I argue that these movements are the result of necessarily exercised capacities. I clarify what it is for a heavenly body to possess a nature and argue that a body’s nature cannot be a final cause unless the natural body possesses capacities that are exercised for (...) the sake of its nature qua form. This discussion yields a better understanding of what capacities are, what explanatory work capacities do, and what it is to possess a nature. (shrink)

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

Tun und Können erläutert und diskutiert den Gründungstext der Modalontologie: das neunte Buch der Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Aristoteles' Thesen und Argumente werden zum ersten Mal in Gänze mit formalen analytischen Mitteln rekonstruiert und auf ihre Kohärenz und Gültigkeit geprüft. Erstmals verwendet der Autor dazu eine adverbiale Analyse von Ausdrücken des Könnens und des Vermögens als Prädikatmodifikatoren. Das Buch zeigt, dass Aristoteles' Theorie der Vermögen nicht nur eine konsistente, sondern auch eine leistungsfähige Analyse von Dispositionen und Dispositionsprädikaten bietet. -/- Die Neuausgabe (...) wurde vollständig durchgesehen und um weiterführende Anhänge ergänzt. -/- Der Inhalt: Können, Tun und Möglichkeit. Eine Einführung • Die kausale Dimension von Vermögen • Die ontologische Dimension von Vermögen• Eine notwendige Bedingung für Vermögen • Hindernisse und Verwirklichung • Prioritätsfragen • Aristotle’s Theory of Dispositions • Das Problem des Neuen • Planners, Deciders, Performers. (shrink)

This dissertation is a collection of essays exploring the role of metaphor in Aristotle’s scientific method. Aristotle often appeals to metaphors in his scientific practice; but in the Posterior Analytics, he suggests that their use is inimical to science. Why, then, does he use them in natural science? And what does his use of metaphor in science reveal about the nature of his scientific investigations? I approach these questions by investigating the epistemic status of metaphor in Aristotelian science. In the (...) first essay, I defend an interpretation of metaphor as a type of heuristic reasoning: I claim that Aristotle uses metaphor to express conditions an explanation in natural science must meet if it is to explain regular, ordered change. These conditions specify the kinds of causes—particularly unmoved efficient causes—which the inquirer into nature is seeking. In the second essay, I look to Aristotle’s use of certain endoxa or common beliefs as explanatory principles in science, and show that his use of these principles is similar to his use of metaphor. In the final essay, I present a historical study of the analogy of art and nature, and I suggest that by looking to how the Greeks understood the role of inquiry in the arts, we can shed some light on Aristotle’s views concerning the method of inquiry he thinks the natural scientist should adopt. (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)

La relación entre el arte y la naturaleza fue concebida a lo largo de más de veinte siglos en los términos que Aristóteles estableció mediante el principio téchne mimeîtai phúsin, el cual tradicionalmente se tradujo como “el arte imita a la naturaleza”. Mediante el presente artículo propongo reevaluar la formulación completa del principio aristotélico con el propósito de entender que éste no solo refiere a la similitud y/o analogía entre las habilidades humanas y la naturaleza, sino también al papel complementario (...) que estas desempeñan respecto de la naturaleza. En la primera parte del trabajo, examino las distintas enunciaciones del principio atestiguadas en el corpus. En la segunda, analizo la función que la política y su principal herramienta, la educación, cumplen respecto de la naturaleza. (shrink)