Corrective intervention in Plato's metaphysics replacing the standard view of Plato as a metaphysical dualist with a novel and revolutionary paradigm of unitary pluralism in a single reality built on ontological diversity.

This paper claims that the argument that Aristotle seems to ascribe to Melissus in Physics III.6 about infinity is different from Melissus’ original argument. On scrutiny, it turns out that the Aristotelian version of the argument takes Melissus to suppose that being is unlimited because it is not in contact with anything else. I claim that this is not Melissus’ notion of unlimitedness for being, and that the Aristotelian version hinges on a reversal of Melissus’ own reasoning.

وجه الوهی فلسفه ارسطو، و به طور خاص وجه الوهی غایت‌شناسی او، مسئله‌ای مناقشه‌برانگیز و حتی شدیداً مورد انکار است؛ چرا که تفسیرهای معاصر غایت‌شناسی، از یک سو غایت‌شناسی الهیاتی را تبیین جهان به عنوان فعل قصدمندانه خالقی حکیم تلقی کرده، و از سوی دیگر غایت‌شناسی ارسطو را صرفاً روشی برای تبیین کارکردهای جواهر طبیعی و افعال انسانی می‌دانند. در نتیجه غایت‌شناسی ارسطو فاقد هر گونه دلالت الهیاتی تلقی می‌شود. این نوشتار با نظر به اوصاف امر الهی در اندیشه ارسطو (...) نشان می‌دهد که او در حوزه زیست‌شناسی و اخلاق، گرچه پای تبیین‌های غایت‌شناختی به معنای طراحی هوشمند را به میان نمی‌کشد، در عین حال، کارکرد نهایی انواع طبیعی زنده و نوع انسان را با ارجاع به عنصری الهی در آنها تبیین می‌کند. به بیان مشخص‌تر، در انواع طبیعی زنده فقط نوع است که از جهت سرمدیت‌اش در جایگاه غایت به معنای حقیقی قرار می‌گیرد، حال آن که در انسان، غایت نهایی با ارجاع به عنصر الوهی محقق در هر فرد یعنی عقل احراز می‌شود. پس خدا به عنوان نمونۀ ایدئال تحققِ حیاتِ سرمدیِ معقول لحاظ می‌شود و غایتمندی جهان طبیعی زنده و جهان انسانی چیزی نیست مگر تشبه به این حیات سرمدی. بنابراین غایت‌شناسی ارسطو واجد استلزامات صریح الهیاتی است و چهارچوبی هستی‌شناختی را برای تفسیر عقلانی مفهوم سعادت در فلسفه‌های دینی فراهم می‌سازد. (shrink)

زبان دین خواهان کشف و تببین ماهیت زبانی است که در الفاظ و گزاره‌های دینی به کار رفته است. این کشف به ما کمک می‌کند تا مراد اصلی یا فحوای حقیقی مضامین دینی را که در قالب زبان بشری بیان شده است دریابیم. غزالی، متأثر از نگرش‌های کلامی و یافته‌های عرفانی خود و با لحاظ مراتب مختلف ادراک مردمان، دیدگاه‌های متفاوتی را در این موضوع ابراز داشته است. از این رو، گاه اجتناب از تأویل را لازم می‌داند، گاه ضرورت عدول (...) از معنای ظاهر را خاطرنشان می‌سازد و گاه با بحث از «روح معنا» که خود طراح آن است، بدون آن که معنای ظاهر انکار شود، گوهر حقیقی معنا را فارغ از ویژگی‌های مصادیق آن منظور می‌نماید. در عین حال، جریان اندیشۀ او در این باب به منزل اشتراک لفظی نیز ورود می‌کند و پایان سیر آن در معناشناسی اوصاف‌ الهی چنین است که حقیقتش نصیب فهم هیچ کس نخواهد شد و معانی آن در صید هیچ ادراکی درنخواهد آمد. (shrink)

In this chapter, Logan Paul Gage examines the only real attempt to disprove God’s existence by a New Atheist: Richard Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit.” Central to Dawkins’s argument is the claim that God is more complex than what he is invoked to explain. Gage evaluates this claim using the main extant notions of simplicity in the literature. Gage concludes that on no reading does this claim survive scrutiny. Along the way, Dawkins claims that there are no good positive arguments for (...) God’s existence. Gage attempts to show that Dawkins’s argument depends upon distinctively philosophical assumptions that do not appear to withstand scrutiny. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Plotinus denies deliberative forethought about the physical cosmos to the demiurge on the basis of certain basic and widely shared Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions about the character of divine thought. We then discuss how Plotinus can nonetheless maintain that the cosmos is «providentially» ordered.

The recognition of striking regularities in the physical world plays a major role in the justification of hypotheses and the development of new theories both in the natural sciences and in philosophy. However, while scientists consider only strictly natural hypotheses as explanations for such regularities, philosophers also explore meta-natural hypotheses. One example is mathematical realism, which proposes the existence of abstract mathematical entities as an explanation for the applicability of mathematics in the sciences. Another example is theism, which offers the (...) existence of a supernatural being as an explanation for the design-like appearance of the physical cosmos. Although all meta-natural hypotheses defy empirical testing, there is a strong intuition that some of them are more warranted than others. The goal of this paper is to sharpen this intuition into a clear criterion for the admissibility of meta-natural explanations for empirical facts. Drawing on recent debates about the indispensability of mathematics and teleological arguments for the existence of God, I argue that a meta-natural explanation is admissible just in case the explanation refers to an entity that, though not itself causally efficacious, guarantees the instantiation of a causally efficacious entity that is an actual cause of the regularity. (shrink)

This book presents a new account of Thales based on the idea that Acheloios, a deity equated with water in the ancient Greek world and found in Miletos during Thales’ life, was the most important cultic deity influencing the thinker, profoundly shaping his philosophical worldview. In doing so, it also weighs in on the metaphysical and epistemological dichotomy that seemingly underlies all academia—the antithesis of the methodological postulate of Marxian dialectical materialism vis-à-vis the Platonic idea of fundamentally real transcendental forms. (...) Unbeknownst to many scholars, there are various Neo-Marxian thinkers that position the origin of coinage as the pivotal technological development giving rise to impersonal “metaphysical cosmology,” suggesting that the value of money was more-or-less projected back onto the cosmos in the form of “ideal substances.” While the arguments are incredibly sophisticated and persuasive, their conclusions (either stated or implied) are rather difficult to swallow: the self is merely an illusion, abstract ideas of an ultimate source of value, like God or the Good, are totally delusional (as is the soul, and presumably any notion of inherent human dignity), and essentially everything is reducible to mankind’s enslavement to commodities and the notion of our own objectified labor, which is the true source of all value according to Marx. Not only is this an alarming belief that many scholars (consciously or unconsciously) have adopted, since essentially any action could be “justified,” it is also demonstrably false, since it rests on a misunderstanding of Thales and misconception of philosophy as such. -/- My work rectifies that misunderstanding. In an important sense, it is an attempt at redefining philosophy as a “love of wisdom,” which I argue was accurate even in the Presocratic setting, and it uses the influence of Acheloios on Thales to do so. Throughout its pages I explore the etymology and historical uses of the word ὔδωρ, examine the archaeological context of 7th to 6th century Miletos, consider various aquatic myths Thales encountered, and highlight a hitherto overlooked tradition stemming from Thales and influencing such thinkers as Pythagoras, Empedokles, and Hippo, which culminates in a completely new reading of Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue in which Plato responds to the exact type of thinking employed by the Neo-Marxians. It is there that we find Socrates and Phaedrus surrounded by the iconography of Acheloios and the nymphs, all while they lie reclined like river gods (the sinews of Acheloios) on the banks of the Ilisos. And it is in that dialogue that Plato defines philosophy as a love of wisdom—the beholding of a multiplicity of hermeneutical frameworks—and alludes to the fact that it began with the sacrifice of Acheloios, the initial philosophical maneuver which he attributes to Thales. The book ends with a threefold rejoinder to the Neo-Marxian school, corresponding to the λόγος, μῦθος, and ἔργον of Acheloios. It turns out that, (1) the λόγος of Acheloios contained the ideal preconditions conducive to an abstraction to a more refined philosophical worldview in which divine water operated as the One among the Many; (2) the μῦθος of Acheloios actually encouraged the application of the notion of sacrifice to Acheloios himself (thus revealing his essence as divine water); and, (3), the ἔργον of Acheloios, in which he kneels in assent to sacrifice, is found on a coin that was probably designed by Thales. In the final analysis, I suggest that the tradition of Acheloios is reflective of a greater philosophical truth, and that by following Thales’ lead, we transcend the Marxian hermeneutic of doubt and reorient ourselves toward the οὐσια ὄντως οὖσα. (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 Greek and Roman atomistic tradition (whose most famous representatives are Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius), defends radical and immanentist ideas about the discovery of technologies in human societies. The appearance of new technologies, insofar as it is due to the satisfaction of human needs and derives from natural necessity, reveals that human work is in some way a natural process. Consequently, human beings do not need any kind of Promethean intervention, which would provide them with new skills and technologies. However, (...) the Epicurean tradition, as evidenced by several texts (especially in Lucretius), echoes the mythological figure of Prometheus, in showing that human beings, through their discoveries, are independent from the gods. Epicurus himself, in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, embodies, like Prometheus, the ideal of human emancipation from superstitious representations of the gods. It does not mean, however, that work and technical discoveries are the best means of emancipation: for Epicurus and his followers, philosophy itself remains the safest way to tranquillity and freedom. (shrink)

This paper explores how to deliberate about food choices from a Stoic perspective informed by the value of environmental sustainability. This perspective is reconstructed from both ancient and contemporary sources of Stoic philosophy. An account of what the Stoic goal of “living in agreement with Nature” would amount to in dietary practice is presented. Given ecological facts about food production, an argument is made that Stoic virtue made manifest as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance compel Stoic practitioners to select locally (...) sourced, low resource input, plant-based foods whenever circumstances allow. (shrink)

In Metaphysics A 6, Aristotle claims that Plato only recognises formal and material causes. Yet, in various dialogues, Plato seems to use and distinguish efficient and final causes too. Consequently, Harold Cherniss accuses Aristotle of being an unfair, forgetful, or careless reader of Plato. Since then, scholars have tried to defend Aristotle’s exegetical skills. I offer textual evidence and arguments to show that their efforts still fall short of the desired goal. I argue, instead, that we can reject Cherniss’ assertation (...) by re-examining Aristotle’s exegetical and methodological assumptions. (shrink)

Empedocles’ B100 contains an analogy between a girl handling a clepsydra and respiration. This article argues that proposals to establish Love or Persephone as the girl’s respiratory equivalent are rendered unlikely by differences between their respective causal roles. Rather than her gender, this article emphasises the importance of the girl’s age: Empedocles required a playful child to handle the clepsydra. This child’s play results in the extra phase of submerging the clepsydra while the upper vent is open, which Empedocles needed (...) to form a parallel for the first static phase of respiration. (shrink)

> καὶ πῶς τις ἀνάξει αὐτοὺς εἰς φῶς, ὥσπερ > > ἐξ Ἅιδου λέγονται δή τινες εἰς θεοὺς ἀνελθεῖν; > > Plato Republic 521c This study reconstructs Empedocles’ eschatology and cosmology, arguing that they presuppose one another. Part one surveys body and soul in Empedocles and argues that the transmigrating daimon is a long-lived compound made of the elements air and fire. Part two shows that Empedocles situates our current life in Hades, then considers the testimonies concerning different cosmic levels (...) in Empedocles and compares them with the afterlife schemes in Pindar’s Second Olympian Ode and Plato’s Phaedo myth. Part three offers a new edition of section d lines 5–10 of the Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles that reinforces the connection between transmigration and different cosmic locations for souls. Part four reconstructs Empedocles’ cosmology, identifies three different levels or habitats of soul, and, more tentatively, suggests that Empedoclean “long-lived gods” are best understood as stars. (shrink)

This paper offers a fresh examination of a salient distinction located at the beginning of the Affinity Argument between the composite (τὸ σύνθετον) and the incomposite (τὸ ἀσύνθετον). I offer reasons for why Plato may have intended for us to assume that the soul is an incomposite unity in its essential nature. I then substantiate this claim by reviving an ancient interpretation to the Affinity Argument according to which the soul is of the same metaphysical kind as the Forms. I (...) thus suggest that the argument may be seen as supporting the basic indestructibility cum immortality of all souls. (shrink)

In this article, both Anaxagoras' theory of multiple worlds and the principles of his theory of matter are examined. It is argued that the five principles, which are set out explicitly in the extant fragments, (No Becoming, Indefinite Types, Universal Mixture, Predominance, and Infinite Divisibility) form a consistent set. Further, it is argued that the principle of Homoeomereity, which Anaxagoras attributes to Anaxagoras, is consistent with Anaxagoras' other principles and is likely to be a genuine principle of Anaxagoras' physics.

In this article, it is argued that, although there is significant debate over the nature of Anaxagoras' response to Parmenides, it is likely that Anaxagoras advances his physical theory in opposition to Parmenides' Numerical Monism. It is unlikely that Anaxagoras aims to develop a theory that harmonizes with the Predicational Monism that is sometimes ascribed to Parmenides. In addition, it is argued that, although some modern scholars suggest that Anaxagoras posits nous as a planning cause, no compelling argument has yet (...) been advanced against Plato's interpretation, according to which Anaxagoras is not a proponent of teleological explanation. (shrink)

This paper argues that a debate between Toland and Clarke is the intellectual context to help understand the motive behind the critic and the significance of Berkeley's response to the critic in PHK 60-66. These, in turn, are responding to Boyle's adaptation of a neglected design argument by Cicero. The paper shows that there is an intimate connection between these claims of natural science and a once famous design argument. In particular, that in the early modern period the connection between (...) the scientific revolution and a certain commitment to final causes, and god's design, is more than merely contingent. The details of PHK 60-66 support the idea that the critic is responding to concerns that by echoing features of Toland's argument Berkeley undermines the Newtonian edifice Clarke has constructed. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is on Xenophanes’ criticism of anthropomorphic representation of the gods, famously sounding like a declaration of war against a constituent part of the Greek religion, and adopting terms and a tone that are unequalled amongst “pre-Socratic” authors for their directness and explicitness. While the main features of Xenophanes’ polemic are well known thanks to some of the most studied fragments of the pre-Socratic tradition, a different line of enquiry from the usual one is attempted by (...) considering the multi-layered background of the religious beliefs revolving around the idea that the gods have human form as outlined in the tradition of epic poetry or represented in cult statues: in the light of this consideration Xenophanes’ text can take on some new characteristics. In the second part of the article, emphasis is put on the importance of the correlation Xenophanes established between the issue of the appearance of the gods and that of the certainty of knowledge, in terms that have exerted tremendous influence on later thought, most notably on Plato in the Timaeus. (shrink)

Our modern scientific explanation of colour as a subjective impression has replaced a ‘pre-theoretical’ notion of colour as an intrinsic property of objects, which was mainstream in ancient thought. Why have we lost such pre-theoretical notion, and what have we lost by losing it? I argue that most ancient Greek philosophers exploited this pre-theoretical assumption – one that was obvious to them – in terms and ways that are still worthy of attention in the context of contemporary philosophy of colour. (...) I offer an in-depth analysis of the theories of a number of early Greek philosophers, as well as of Plato in the Timaeus, showing that they tend to share the idea that colour is an essential property of external bodies and therefore plays a causal role in perception. Then I focus on a comparison between Democritus’ stance and Aristotle’s in order to highlight a significant contrast between the two. Democritus' theory is an exception in ancient thought because it traces the colour phenomenon back to a refraction of atmospheric light through atomic aggregates. Aristotle, instead, posits the presence of colour and light in the bodies themselves. Finally, I interpret Aristotle's account as the most complex attempt in ancient thought to weld together what we call the ‘manifest image’ of colour and its ‘scientific image’. (shrink)

There is a strong need of a reasoned defense of what was known as the “independence” position of the science–religion relationship but that more recently has been denigrated as the “accommodationist” position, namely that while there are parts of religion—fundamentalist Christianity in particular—that clash with modern science, the essential parts of religion do not and could not clash with science. A case for this position is made on the grounds of the essentially metaphorical nature of science. Modern science functions because (...) of its root metaphor of the machine: the world is seen in mechanical terms. As Thomas Kuhn insisted, metaphors function in part by ruling some questions outside their domain. In the case of modern science, four questions go unasked and hence unanswered: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the foundation of morality? What is mind and its relationship to matter? What is the meaning of it all? You can remain a nonreligious skeptic on these questions, but it is open for the Christian to offer his or her answers, so long as they are not scientific answers. Here then is a way that science and religion can coexist. (shrink)

How is moral thinking, ethics, related to evolutionary theorizing? There are two approaches, epitomized by Charles Darwin who works under the metaphor of the world as a machine, and by Herbert Spencer who works under the metaphor of the world as an organism. Although the author prefers the first approach, the aim of this paper is to give a disinterested account of both approaches.

This paper aims to investigate the equivalent of Epicurus’ πρόληψις, the second criterion of the Epicurean Canonic (DL X 31 = fr. 35 Usener), in Lucretius’ De rerum natura (DRN). Taking stock of the several occurrences of the Latin terms notitia and notities in the six books of the poem, I show that Lucretius’ view about preconception remains faithful to Epicurus’ πρόληψις, and that the poet does not endorse a less empiricist position than his Master because of some influence of (...) the Stoic ἔννοια. To this end, I will also briefly address an important case in which πρόληψις, albeit not clearly mentioned, plays an essential role, namely the prolepsis of the deity (DRN V 1169–1182). Finally, I explain how Lucretius can be of some help in grasping the controversial relationship between the criterion of πρόληψις and that of ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας (animi inectus/iactus), showing in which way the poet seems to consider the latter as a criterion of truth in its own right. (shrink)

The paper provides an innovative interpretation of the treatise De Victu, showing that, though Heraclitean, Anaxagorean and Empedoclean borrowings in the work are certainly pervasive, the author also develops a sophisticated and multi-purpose explanatory framework, which, being based on an original conception of the nature of man, the cosmos and the relationship between the two, provides an effective foundation for the medical enterprise, allowing him to propose his dietetics as a ‘way of life’. At the core of this enterprise is (...) the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm: in virtue of this relationship, I submit, the cosmos becomes both an active factor to be taken into account for the maintenance of individual physical well-being and the normative standard to which a dietician and whoever cares about health must refer in order to live the healthiest possible life. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to a problem raised by Sarah Broadie in her 1987 article “Nature, Craft and Phronesis in Aristotle.” Broadie analyzes Aristotle’s famous craft analogy for natural causation in order to determine whether or not it requires importing a psychological dimension to natural teleology. She argues that it is possible to make sense of the analogy without psychology, but that the tradeoff is a conception of craft so thoroughly de-psychologized that it is rendered unrecognizable, perhaps even incoherent (...) as a referent. I dispute this suggestion and argue, rather, that Aristotle’s insistence on removing psychology from the craft side of the analogy points to his prioritization of techne itself, rather than any particular craftsman, as primary efficient agent. The lack of psychology that characterizes a techne ensures stability and reliability in the causal process that could not be guaranteed by the idiosyncratic psychologies of various craftspeople. The same kind of stability and reliability belong to nature as an efficient cause, forming the basis of the comparison between craft and natural teleology. It is therefore the craft, not the craftsman, that must stand as analog to nature. I demonstrate the value of this revision by applying the analogy to the case of natural teleology: reproduction as depicted in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals. The result is a reading of Aristotle’s analogies that can assuage Broadie’s concerns and allow for a natural thing’s own nature to more fully inhabit its intended role as an inner source of change. (shrink)

There is a striking resemblance between the physical theory of Plato'sTimaeus and that of the Stoics; striking enough, indeed, to warrant the supposition that the latter was substantially influenced by the former. In attempting to trace the main lines of this influence, scholars have tended to focus attention almost exclusively on the Stoics' choice and characterization of the world's ultimate constituents: a rational principle that pervades and controls a material principle. In this paper, I offer some suggestions about how the (...) early Stoics may have reacted as readers to Plato's literary presentation of the dialogue's cosmogonic myth. On this basis I consider the proposal that the crucial philosophical appeal of the Timaeus for the Stoics – and perhaps the reason it attracted their interest in the first place – lay not in its claims about the Receptacle and World Soul, but rather in its portrayal of the Demiurge who designed the cosmos. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of Plato’s precosmos (Ti. 52d2–53c3). More specifically, I shall argue that the precosmos is populated by bodies deriving from random complexes of properties, and that this is the effect of the Receptacle’s full precosmic participation in the Paradigm. This will turn out to be consistent with a robust notion of ‘precosmic generation’ and will reveal why Plato may have sought to refer to this otherwise puzzling scenario: representing the precosmos (...) in this way allows Plato to effectively justify why the Demiurge is responsible only for the goodness and perfection of the universe, and why it is properly the best possible cause. (shrink)

Burnet's text at Pl. Ti. 55c7–d6 is at least questionable, and opting for a different reading at 55d5 would shed light on an intriguing argumentative aspect of Plato's cosmological account: God confirms the metaphysical reasons why there is just one perfect world.

_ Source: _Volume 61, Issue 1, pp 43 - 59 Contemporary debate on Plato’s cosmogony often assumes that the ‘literal’ reading of the _Timaeus_ yields an account of creation, while the view that the cosmos always existed is non-literal. In antiquity, Taurus has been seen as a forerunner of the ‘non-literal’ interpretation. This paper shows, on the contrary, that Taurus’ argument for the sempiternity of the cosmos is a literalist one, relying on a strict linguistic analysis of _Timaeus_ 28b6-8.

The paper addresses the following question: why do human beings, on Aristotle’s view, have an innate tendency to badness, that is, to developing desires that go beyond, and often against, their natural needs? Given Aristotle’s teleological assumptions (including the thesis that nature does nothing in vain), such tendency should not be present. I argue that the culprit is to be found in the workings of rationality. In particular, it is the presence of theoretical reason that necessitates the limitless nature of (...) human non-rational desires. (shrink)

In the Theaetetus Socrates provides an elaboration and discussion of Protagoras’ measure doctrine, grounding it in a “secret doctrine” of flux. This paper argues that the anthropology of the myth in the Protagoras provides an earlier, very different way to explain the measure doctrine, focusing on its application to civic values, such as “just,” “fine,” and “pious.” The paper shows that Protagoras’ explanation of the dual etiology of virtue – that it is acquired both by nature and by nurture – (...) tracks the two meanings of “anthropos” in his formulation of the measure doctrine, as “humankind” and “individual human.” On Protagoras’ account, humankind’s survival can be explained by the fact that humans share shame and justice, which enables them to live together in cities. (shrink)

The relationship between mind and necessity is one of the major points of difficulty for the interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. At times Timaeus seems to say the demiurge is omnipotent in his creation, and at other times seems to say he is limited by pre-existing matter. Most interpretations take one of the two sides, but this paper proposes a novel approach to interpreting this issue which resolves the difficulty. This paper suggests that in his speech Timaeus presents two hypothetical models (...) of creation, one with an omnipotent demiurge and one where he is limited by matter, so as to investigate their theoretical and empirical validity. Further, he shows that each model is ultimately an inadequate explanation of the first principles of the cosmos. Timaeus’ speech is therefore properly understood to be aporetic: it leaves its listeners aware of the difficulties inherent in the two models of creation, but without a more viable alternative. (shrink)

Some features within the physical universe appear to be so well-ordered that they have been regarded as evidence of the existence of a supernatural being who has designed them. This history of the so-called design argument is millennia-long, and various formulations of the argument have been presented. In this paper, I explore one contemporary version of the design argument proposed by the Intelligent Design movement, and analyze its advantages and disadvantages in comparison to one of the most famous classical versions (...) of the argument. (shrink)

Does Anaxagoras admit that the world is destructible? Aëtius’ doxographical handbook says as much, and so does a doxographical scholion derived from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on Aristotle’sPhysics(Frag. 539 Rashed) according to the transmitted text. However, because of other difficulties occurring in the same scholion, Rashed was led to correct not only this text, thus making it contradict Aëtius’ testimony, but also the entry dedicated to Plato. My article suggests that while Rashed’s corrections are superfluous, the problems that triggered (...) them are of great interest for the history of the doxographical tradition, for the way in which this tradition was used by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius in their commentaries on Aristotle’sPhysicsand, last but not least, for the understanding of the difficulties that ancient interpreters had to confront when they had to make sense of the lines now known as Anaxagoras B12 DK – difficulties that modern interpreters have still to confront. (shrink)

Arguments are advanced that ethics provide the building blocks for the cultural evolution of those forms of behaviour that distinguish different human moral communities. To perform this function ethical variants need to be maintained within communities over many generations and this is achieved by religious prescription enshrining the ethical variants. This gives religions their essential function. It also follows that ethics themselves must evolve and be subject to natural selection. Some ethical variants and their possible survival value are discussed. This (...) survival value is clearly distinct from the reasons that the variants were introduced. Finally, the consequences for ethical evolution arising from the change of humans from an endangered to an endangering species are considered. (shrink)

“Intelligent Design” (ID) is a contemporary intellectual movement arguing that there is scientific evidence for the existence of some sort of creator. Its proponents see ID as a scientific research program and as a way to build a bridge between science and theology, while many critics see it merely as a repackaged form of religiously motivated creationism: both bad science and bad theology. In this article, I offer a close reading of the ID movement's critique of theistic evolutionism and argue (...) that this critique is ultimately in tension with the movement's broader thought. (shrink)

In his opening speech, Timaeus argues that the cosmos must be the product of a craftsman looking to an eternal paradigm. Yet his premises seem at best to justify only that the world could have been made by such a craftsman. This paper seeks to clarify Timaeus’ justification for his stronger conclusion. It is argued that Timaeus sees a necessary role for craftsmanship as a cause that makes becoming like being.

The best-known fact about the interaction of the Republican Roman poet Gaius Lucilius (c.180–103/102b.c.e.), the inventor of the genre of Roman verse satire, with the doctrine of Scepticism is probably a statement of Cicero: that Clitomachus the Academician dedicated a treatise to the poet (Cic.Luc. 102). Diogenes Laertius makes much of that writer's, Clitomachus’, industry (τὸ φιλόπονον, 4.67), with the comment: ‘to such lengths did his diligence (ἐπιμελείας) go that he composed more than four hundred treatises’. This phraseology surely reminds (...) those interested in Lucilius’ influence on later Latin poetry of Horace's disparaging comment,in hora saepe ducentos, | ut magnum, uersus dictabat(‘as a bravura display, he would often dictate two hundred verses in an hour’,Sat.1.4.9–10); moreover, Horace shortly afterwards calls his predecessorgarrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem(‘talkative and too lazy to bear the work of writing’, 1.4.12). Yet, a sceptical view of Horace's critique might have to think of Lucilius as hard-working, like his putative friend the Academic philosopher, Clitomachus. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the theory of Forms is regarded as the hallmark of Plato’s philosophy, it has remained remarkably elusive, because it is more hinted at than explained in his dialogues. Given the uncertainty concerning the nature and extension of the Forms, this article makes no pretense to coming up with solutions to all problems that have occupied scholars since antiquity. It aims to elucidate only two aspects of that theory: the indication in certain dialogues that the Forms are (...) what in modern parlance are called functions or purposes, and the indication in other dialogues that such functions rely on harmonious structures. (shrink)

Readers of Plato since antiquity have generally taken Socrates’ intellectual autobiography in the Phaedo as a signal of his turn away from the study of natural philosophy. They have turned instead to characters such as Timaeus for evidence of Plato’s pursuit of physics. This article argues that Plato’s Socrates himself developed a philosophy of nature in his criticism of Anaxagoras and his subsequent philosophic pursuits. Socrates’ autobiography places the study of nature in a foundational position within the development of his (...) philosophic method. In the Apology, Socrates further elaborated his investigation into nature through his understanding of theology. Finally, in the Phaedrus, Socrates connects the study of nature with the study of rhetoric as tools for virtue. Therefore, Plato’s Socrates does not reject or abandon physics, as has often been suggested, but rather, he incorporates it into his own philosophic project and challenges its practitioners to connect their own inquiries with human affairs. (shrink)

The studies of Empedocles have made headway in showing that Empedocles postulated a double zoogony. Whereas this has been traditionally related to the hypothesis of two worlds per cycle, some Empedoclean fragments provide evidence for a double zoogony in a cosmic cycle with one world. How can we reconcile the hypothesis of two zoogonies with the assumption of a unique world? Whereas there have been attempts to address this question by retaining the traditional idea of two opposite zoogonic periods or (...) phases, I contend that Empedocles’ fragments invite us to a reconsideration of his notion of a double birth and death of mortal beings. (shrink)

The reconstruction of ensemble d–f of the Akhmîm Papyrus, better known as the Strasbourg Papyrus, which attests approximately eighteen of the over seventy new lines of Empedocles’ physical poem, has drawn the attention of scholars over recent years. Thanks to the good condition of the papyrus and the coincidence with two Empedoclean lines, already known from the indirect tradition, ensemble d–f 1–10a presents a well-restored text and an intelligible sense. In contrast, because of the damaged state of the papyrus, the (...) restoration of d–f 10b–18 is more complicated. These lines seem to describe a life-generative process, but what process was Empedocles talking about? Some resemblances between these papyrus lines and the lines of another Empedoclean fragment, DK 31 B 62, have suggested to scholars, notably to A. Martin and O. Primavesi in 1999 and M. Rashed in 2011, that the lines of the papyrus depict, just like DK 31 B 62, the generation of whole-natured beings. Other scholars, however, such as R. Janko in 2004 and A. Laks and G.W. Most in 2016, show more caution and leave the possibility open that Empedocles is here talking about the generation of something else. (shrink)

Aristotle’s soul is a first principle (an ‘efficient cause’) of every vital change in an animal, in the way that a craft is a cause of its product’s coming-to-be. We argue that the soul’s causal efficacy cannot therefore be reduced to the formal constitution of vital phenomena, or to discrete interventions into independently constituted processes, but involves the exercise of vital powers. This reading does better justice to Aristotle’s conception of craft as a rational productive disposition; and it captures the (...) soul’s continuous causal role as that which brings about all forms of vital change and underwrites their unity. (shrink)