I discuss some of Aristotle’s scattered remarks from which one can construct his conception of matter. Aristotle seems to oscillate between two conceptions: one in which matter is the principle of becoming, another in which matter is a constituent element with no contribution for processes of becoming. Sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a thing independent in itself, and the correlated form is a feature that does not contribute to the matter’s essence, nor is a necessary condition for its existence. But (...) sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a constituent element the existence of which depends on the whole thing it is the matter of. These different approaches to matter seem to suggest an inconsistent theory of matter. However, I argue that, quite to the contrary, Aristotle has a consistent theory about matter. One of my main points is to distinguish contexts in which Aristotle is indeed talking about matter in general from contexts in which he uses the term “matter” to refer to a given thing that was previously taken as matter and to talk about that thing not qua matter, but qua the thing it is. (shrink)

This paper explores the issue of life and its relevance to nursing, through Aristotle's philosophy and an Aristotelian interpretation of Nightingale's Notes on Nursing. Life as process and becoming has ontological status in Aristotle's philosophy and this dynamism is particularly relevant for nursing. The paper presents aspects of Aristotle's philosophy of life: his account of life as inherent powers of the individual, his analysis of change and time, and his understanding of sickness and health as qualitative states of living beings. (...) It is shown how the Greek medical‐philosophical tradition, continued by Galenic medicine and hygiene into modern time, influenced Nightingale's nursing. Individuals' life‐maintaining metabolic relations to their surroundings are investigated through Aristotle and modern philosophy of biology and through Nightingale's nursing emphasis on the patient's relation to her or his immediate surroundings. It is argued that Nightingale's concern is really the processes of individual life, which in sickness necessitate temporally continuous nursing observation. Humans' radical dependency on their surroundings is actualized as interpersonal interdependency. The paper argues that the end of nursing care, the telos for which sake it is practised, is inherent in the individual course of the patients' life. When life processes are affected by sickness, infirmity, medical interventions or mental suffering, individuals need competent help to live – and to live as well as possible. It is suggested that the special responsibility of nursing is to facilitate, relieve and protect individual life continuously during such times. (shrink)

This book investigates Aristotle’s views on abstraction and explores how he uses it. In this work, the author follows Aristotle in focusing on the scientific detail first and then approaches the metaphysical claims, and so creates a reconstructed theory that explains many puzzles of Aristotle’s thought. Understanding the details of his theory of relations and abstraction further illuminates his theory of universals. Some of the features of Aristotle’s theory of abstraction developed in this book include: abstraction is a relation; perception (...) and knowledge are types of abstraction; the objects generated by abstractions are relata which can serve as subjects in their own right, whereupon they can appear as items in other categories. The author goes on to look at how Aristotle distinguishes the concrete from the abstract paronym, how induction is a type of abstraction which typically moves from the perceived individuals to universals and how Aristotle’s metaphysical vocabulary is "relational.’ Beyond those features, this work also looks at how of universals, accidents, forms, causes and potentialities have being only as abstract aspects of individual substances. An individual substance is identical to its essence; the essence has universal features but is the singularity making the individual substance what it is. These theories are expounded within this book. One main attraction in working out the details of Aristotle’s views on abstraction lies in understanding his metaphysics of universals as abstract objects. This work reclaims past ground as the main philosophical tradition of abstraction has been ignored in recent times. It gives a modern version of the medieval doctrine of the threefold distinction of essence, made famous by the Islamic philosopher, Avicenna. (shrink)

I discuss Peramatzis's (2011) argument that the form of a natural substance is essentially enmattered and so contains a material component.

There are several innocuous or trivial ways in which to explicate Aristotle’s hylomorphism. For example: objects are characterisable in terms of matter and form; or analysable into matter and form; or understood on the basis of matter and form. Serious problems arise when we seek to specify the sorts of relation holding among the different contributors to the hylomorphic picture. Here are some central general questions: a. What types of relation are most suitable for each n-tuple of contributors? b. What (...) direction and modal profile should each relation have? In addressing such questions we find that the types, directions, or modal character of the relations that we or Aristotle may favour are often in tension with each other, or clearly lead to inconsistencies. The paper focuses on the Modal Question, also known as ‘Ackrill’s problem’: is form essentially or contingently related to matter? I outline a hylomorphic model, what I label the ‘causal-explanatory’ model, and show how it can tackle M. (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)

The expression tode ti, commonly translated as ‘a this’, plays a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Drawing lightly on theories of demonstratives in contemporary linguistics, I discuss the expres...

Aristotle is traditionally read as dividing animal souls into three parts, while dividing human souls into four parts (a rational part, with theoretical and pr...

Ackrill’s Problem is a tension between Aristotle’s alleged view that the matter of a living being is a body that is essentially ensouled, and his view that the matter of a substance preexists its generation. Most interpreters solve the tension by claiming that the subject of substantial generation is not the organic body of the living being, but its non-organic matter. I defend a different solution by showing that the embryological theory ofOn the Generation of Animalsimplies that the organic body (...) of a living being already exists before acquiring the soul in actuality. (shrink)

In Aristotle’s On the Soul he considers and refutes two versions of the harmonia theory of the soul’s relation to the body. According to the harmonia theory, the soul is to the body what the tuning of a musical instrument is to its material parts. Though he believes himself to have entirely dismissed the view, he has not. I argue that Aristotle’s hylomorphic account is, in fact, an instance of the harmonia theory.

This paper concerns the classification of the process of mixture, for Aristotle, and the related issue of the manner in which the ingredients remain present once mixed. I argue that mixture is best viewed as a kind of substantial generation in the context of the GC and, accordingly, that the ingredients do not enjoy the kind of strong presence within a mixture usually attributed to them. To do this, I critically examine the most promising versions of the standard view and (...) offer a new interpretation of Aristotle’s treatment of a puzzle about mixture in GC 1.10. (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)

One of the unresolved issues in Aristotle’s hylomorphism is the part-whole puzzle. Some scholars suppose that in Metaphysics Z 17, 1041b11-33 he endorses non-mereological hylomorphism. This kind of interpretation, however, has been challenged by K. Koslicki who argues that if the evidence in Metaphysics Z 17 is combined with some related textual and conceptual considerations, then a convincing case can be made for a mereological construal of Aristotelian hylomorphism. This paper does four things. First, it scrutinizes these opposing approaches to (...) Aristotle’s theory. Second, it suggests that to adjudicate the dispute at hand one ought to determine how Aristotle deals with what has come to be known as ‘Ackrill’s problem’. It is proposed that if we consider Aristotle’s theory in light of some distinctions drawn in contemporary discussions of hylomorphism, then it transpires that he does have a solution to Ackrill’s problem. Third, it is shown that his solution to this problem suggests a particular way of settling the debate over the part-whole puzzle. And finally, it is argued that the suggested reconstruction of Aristotelian hylomorphism is consistent with the textual evidence in Metaphysics Z 17 and its associated texts. (shrink)

This project is guided and motivated by the question concerning the nature of the phantasm as that which mediates between sensation and intellection in John Duns Scotus' account of cognition. Scotus embraces Aristotle's claim that the intellect cannot think without the phantasm. The phantasm is in a corporeal organ, yet the immaterial intellect must act with it to produce an intelligible species. In this project I examine the critical elements of Scotus' cognitive theory in order to understand the nature of (...) the phantasm. In the first chapter I discuss key elements of Aristotle's metaphysics and give a close, textual reading of De Anima guided by his claim that the relationship of the body and soul is highly specific. I then focus on his claim in De Anima 2.12 that sensation involves the reception of the sensible form without the matter. In the second chapter, I discuss Scotus' key theological notions that guide and inform his cognitive project. The beatific vision requires the presence of the divine essence in its own existence to the intellect. As the highest cognitive experience, the beatific vision is definitive of all cognitive experience making the presence of the object to the cognitive faculty of central importance. The discussion of the incarnation shows that the world is sacralized and thus, is a worthy object of cognitive attention in itself. In the third chapter, I discuss Scotus' understanding of the body-soul relationship focusing on his notion of person to both secure the unity of the human being and to ground the mediation between sensation and intellection. In the fourth chapter, I first discuss Aquinas' claim that sensation requires a spiritual change. While Scotus's account is in many respects the same as Aquinas', Scotus does not maintain that sensation is primarily passive and is thus, able to account for cognitive attention by way of his understanding of the unity of the sense organ, immanent actions, and sensation as intuitive cognition. What emerges in this discussion is Scotus' particular understanding of an intentio by which the nature of the phantasm can be understood. (shrink)

Proposes an innovative rethinking of Aristotle’s work as a system that integrates his theology with his doctrine of reproduction and life. In this deep rethinking of Aristotle’s work, Abraham P. Bos argues that scholarship on Aristotle’s philosophy has erred since antiquity in denying the connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the earthly sphere. Beginning with an analysis of God’s role in the Aristotelian system, Bos explores how this relates to other elements of his philosophy, (...) especially to his theory of reproduction. The argument he develops is that in talking about the cosmos, Aristotle rejected Plato’s metaphor of artisanal production by a divine Demiurge in favor of a biotic metaphor based on the transmission of life in reproduction, in which pneuma—not breath as it is often interpreted but the life-bearing spirit in animals and plants—plays a key and sustaining role as the vital principle in all that lives. In making this case, he defends the authenticity of the treatises De Mundo and De Spiritu as Aristotle’s, and demonstrates Aristotle’s works as a unified system that sharply and comprehensively refutes Plato’s, and in particular replaces Plato’s doctrine of the soul with a theory in which the soul is clearly distinguished from the intellect. “Bos offers a fresh, interesting, and important perspective. His interpretation will be very controversial, but if he is right, the standard Anglo-American interpretation of Aristotle will have to change radically.” — Malcolm Wilson, author of Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica: A More Disorderly Nature. (shrink)