In this paper, I compare the Megarian thesis of Metaphysics IX 3 with other sources on the Megarians in order to clarify two questions: that of the unity and nature of the so-called Megarian school and that of Aristotle’s broader argument in IX 3. I first review the disputed issue of the status of the Megarian school and then examine two hypotheses regarding the identity behind Aristotle’s allusion in IX 3. Third, I explore the connection between Megarianism and Plato’s Euthydemus, (...) a task that helps us to contextualize Aristotle’s anti-Megarian polemic. Lastly, I build on the preceding argument in a re-examination of the Eleatic hypothesis with regard both to the Megarians as a whole and to the thesis that Aristotle transmits. (shrink)

Bryson of Heraclea and Polyxenus have received little attention from scholars. Sources on these philosophers are few and difficult to interpret. However, they present interesting dialectical arguments that concern some of Plato’s and Aristotle’s most important theoretical elaborations: Bryson’s arguments on the issue of semantic ambiguity were explicitly discussed by Aristotle, and Polyxenus is credited with a particular version of the Third Man argument. My purpose in this paper is to reconstruct the historical background of these two philosophers and to (...) analyze the philosophical implications of the arguments that the ancient tradition ascribes to them. (shrink)

This paper discusses ancient versions of paradoxes today classified as paradoxes of presupposition and how their ancient solutions compare with contemporary ones. Sections 1–4 air ancient evidence for the Fallacy of Complex Question and suggested solutions, introduce the Horn Paradox, consider its authorship and contemporary solutions. Section 5 reconstructs the Stoic solution, suggesting the Stoics produced a Russellian-type solution based on a hidden scope ambiguity of negation. The difference to Russell’s explanation of definite descriptions is that in the Horn Paradox (...) the Stoics uncovered a hidden conjunction rather than existential sentence. Sections 6 and 7 investigate hidden ambiguities in “to have” and “to lose” and ambiguities of quantification based on substitution of indefinite plural expressions for indefinite or anaphoric pronouns, and Stoic awareness of these. Section 8 considers metaphorical readings and allusions that add further spice to the paradox. (shrink)

Relative essentialism, the view that multiple objects about which there are distinct de re modal truths can occupy the same space at the same time, is a metaphysical view that dissolves a number of metaphysical issues. The present essay constructs and defends relative essentialism and argues that it is implicit in some of the ideas of W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson. Davidson’s published views about individuation and sameness can accommodate the common-sense insights about change and persistence of Aristotle and (...) Kripke. Aristotle and Kripke have to give up unmediated direct reference resting on a unique correct articulation of reality into entities. Davidson has to acknowledge a distinction between descriptions giving accidental and those giving essential features of an object. Quine and Davidson were in a position to be a relative essentialist, but were over-impressed by supervenience. The relative essentialist view of beings developed from Quine and Davidson strongly suggests the Heideggerian distinction between beings and Being, and is the perspective from which analytic philosophy can engage that topic. Relative essentialism also connects analytic philosophy to Derrida’s thinking about differance. (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime-ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)

This article explores the properties of formulations in a corpus of Hebrew radio phone-ins by juxtaposing two theoretical frameworks: conversation analysis and dialogic syntax. This combination of frameworks is applied towards explaining an anomalous interaction in the collection – a caller’s marked, unexpected rejection of a formulation of gist produced by the radio phone-in’s host. Our analysis shows that whereas previous CA studies of formulations account for many instances throughout the corpus, understanding this particular formulation in CA terms does not (...) explain its drastic rejection by the caller. We therefore turn to an in-depth examination of strategies for lexical and syntactic resonance as a stance-taking device throughout the interaction. In so doing, we not only shed light on the anomalous interaction, but also offer an answer to a provocative question previously put forward by Haddington concerning which of the two – stances or actions – have more meaningful consequences for the description of the organization of interaction. In the particular interaction analyzed here, stances play the more significant role. We propose that the intersubjective stance-taking of participants may be viewed as a meta-action employed among participants as they move across actions, sequences, and activities in talk. (shrink)

Pretendemos neste artigo apresentar uma aproximação crítica com relação à filosofia desenvolvida pelos chamados megáricos, em face sobretudo da figura de Euclides de Mégara como representante e líder dessa linhagem de pensamento. O enfoque será feito tendo em vista o tipo de filosofia exposta e praticada por Euclides, a partir das acusações que contra ela se fizeram denunciando-a como pura erística, ou seja, a disputa e o debate entre discursos com o único objetivo de obter vitória na argumentação. O que (...) se constata em Euclides é a defesa da prática do debate com a finalidade de mostrar que o discurso é incapaz de dar conta da realidade, de um modo geral, e assim impossível de determinar, de um modo específico, o Ser e a Unidade que são a essência daquilo que organiza e move todas as coisas. Essa essência de ordem é desejável por ser boa, e o Bem se apresenta, assim, como fundamento da realidade. Os estudos sobre a tradição megárica dividem-se entre a influência dos eleatas e a influência de Sócrates. Faremos, desse modo, a defesa de que a filosofia de Euclides está afinada com o socratismo, conjugando de um modo exemplar aquilo que os eleatas haviam definido em relação ao Ser. (shrink)