A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved (...) in several works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

This chapter offers a complete account of Aristotle’s underexplored treatment of the virtue of wittiness (eutrapelia) in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8. It addresses the following questions: (1) What, according to Aristotle, is this virtue and what is its structure? (2) How do Aristotle’s moral psychological views inform Aristotle’s account, and how might Aristotle’s discussions of other, more familiar virtues, enable us to understand wittiness better? In particular, what passions does the virtue of wittiness concern, and how (...) might the virtue (and its attendant vices) be related to the virtue of temperance (and its attendant vices)? (3) How does wittiness, as an ethical virtue, benefit its possessor? (4) How can Aristotle resolve some key tensions that his introducing a virtue of wittiness apparently generates for his ethics? In addition to exploring these questions, this chapter challenges some commonly accepted accounts of Aristotle’s views on the nature of the laughable. (shrink)

For Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge is the result of what he calls ‘intellectual learning’, a process in which the knowledge of a conclusion depends on previous knowledge of the premises. Since demonstrations are ultimately based on indemonstrable principles (the knowledge of which is called ‘νοῦς’), Aristotle is often described as advancing a foundationalist doctrine. Without disputing the nomenclature, I shall attempt to show that Aristotle’s ‘foundationalism’ should not be taken as a rationalist theory of epistemic justification, as if (...) the first principles of science could be known as such independently of their explanatory connections to demonstrable propositions. I shall argue that knowing first principles as such involves knowing them as explanatory of other scientific propositions. I shall then explain in which way noetic and demonstrative knowledge are in a sense interdependent cognitive states – even though νοῦς remains distinct from (and, in Aristotle’s words, more ‘accurate’ than) demonstrative knowledge. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present a new reconstruction of Aristotle's assertoric logic as he develops it in Prior Analytics, A1-7. This reconstruction will be much closer to Aristotle's original...

Aristotle’s typical procedure is to identify something's four causes. Intentional action has typically been treated as an exception: most think that Aristotle has the standard causalist account, according to which an intentional action is a bodily movement efficiently caused by an attitude of the appropriate sort. I show that action is not an exception to Aristotle’s typical procedure: he has the resources to specify four causes of action, and thus to articulate a powerful theory of action unlike (...) any other on offer. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces (...) a contrast in terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

Aristotle holds that individual substances are ontologically independent from nonsubstances and universal substances but that non-substances and universal substances are ontologically dependent on substances. There is then an asymmetry between individual substances and other kinds of beings with respect to ontological dependence. Under what could plausibly be called the standard interpretation, the ontological independence ascribed to individual substances and denied of non-substances and universal substances is a capacity for independent existence. There is, however, a tension between this interpretation and (...) the asymmetry between individual substances and the other kinds of entities with respect to ontological independence. I will propose an alternative interpretation: to weaken the relevant notion of ontological independence from a capacity for independent existence to the independent possession of a certain ontological status. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue (...) for rejecting it. This allows a straightforward solution to the problem and there is evidence that Aristotle would have adopted it. (shrink)

In Posterior Analytics 71b9 12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientific knowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientific knowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying due attention to (...) this contrast and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause. (shrink)

This presentation of Aristotle's natural deduction system supplements earlier presentations and gives more historical evidence. Some fine-tunings resulted from conversations with Timothy Smiley, Charles Kahn, Josiah Gould, John Kearns,John Glanvillle, and William Parry.The criticism of Aristotle's theory of propositions found at the end of this 1974 presentation was retracted in Corcoran's 2009 HPL article "Aristotle's demonstrative logic".

Aristotle is said to have held that any kind of actual infinity is impossible. I argue that he was a finitist (or "potentialist") about _magnitude_, but not about _plurality_. He did not deny that there are, or can be, infinitely many things in actuality. If this is right, then it has implications for Aristotle's views about the metaphysics of parts and points.

Aristotle tells us that contemplation is the most self-sufficient form of virtuous activity: we can contemplate alone, and with minimal resources, while moral virtues like courage require other individuals to be courageous towards, or courageous with. This is hard to square with the rest of his discussion of self-sufficiency in the Ethics: Aristotle doesn't generally seek to minimize the number of resources necessary for a flourishing human life, and seems happy to grant that such a life will be (...) self-sufficient despite requiring a lot of external goods. In this paper I develop an interpretation of self-sufficiency as a form of independence from external contributors to our activity, and argue that this interpretation accounts both for Aristotle's views on contemplation and for the role self-sufficiency plays in his broader account of human happiness. (shrink)

Aristotle's cognitive ideal is a form of understanding that requires a sophisticated grasp of scientific first principles. At the end of the Analytics, Aristotle tells us that we learn these principles by induction. But on the whole, commentators have found this an implausible claim: induction seems far too basic a process to yield the sort of knowledge Aristotle's account requires. In this paper I argue that this criticism is misguided. I defend a broader reading of Aristotelian induction, (...) on which there's good sense to be made of the claim that we come to grasp first principles inductively, and show that this reading is a natural one given Aristotle's broader views on scientific learning. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error (...) can help to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that Aristotle holds that the best moral education involves habituation in the proper pleasures of virtuous action. But it is rarely acknowledged that Aristotle repeatedly emphasizes the social and political sources of good habits, and strongly suggests that the correct law‐ordained education in proper pleasures is very rare or non‐existent. A careful look at the Nicomachean Ethics along with parallel discussions in the Eudemian Ethics and Politics suggests that Aristotle divided public moral education (...) or law‐ordained habituation into two types. One type is a defective form practiced by the Spartans, producing civic courage and similar defective virtue‐ like states motivated by external incentives. By contrast Aristotle endorses the law‐ordained musical education described in Politics 8. The chapter argues that Aristotle considers the well‐habituated state of proper pleasures in virtue to be best cultivated by this kind of musical education; and that this explains both his emphasis on good laws and on their scarcity. (shrink)

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that (...) class='Hi'>Aristotle studied the common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the widely held view that Aristotle's vicious agent is a principled follower of a wrong conception of the good whose soul, just like the soul of the virtuous agent, is marked by harmony between his reason and non-rational desires is an exegetical mistake. Rather, Aristotle holds – consistently and throughout the Nicomachean Ethics – that the vicious agent lacks any real principles of action and that his soul lacks unity and harmony even (...) more than the soul of the uncontrolled agent. (shrink)

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I (...) argue that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle’s account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristotle’s socioeconomic context. The ideological nature of Aristotle’s (...) account of natural slavery is especially evident in his “proto-racialization” of the category of the “natural slave.” The Marxist concept of ideology is demonstrably useful in the historical study of philosophy, as compared with internalist historians of philosophy who claim that referring to nonphilosophical factors such as class interests inevitably obscures the philosophical content of the texts that are the objects of analysis. (shrink)

Aristotle is history’s most famous and influential proponent of the view that there are exactly five senses. But was he entitled to hold this view, given his other commitments? In particular, was he entitled to treat touch as a single sense, given the diversity of its correlated objects? In this paper I argue that Aristotle wished to individuate touch on the basis of its correlated objects, just as he had the other four senses. I also argue, contrary to (...) what is often supposed, that he was well-placed to do so, given his other commitments and views. (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)

Both literalism, the view that mathematical objects simply exist in the empirical world, and fictionalism, the view that mathematical objects do not exist but are rather harmless fictions, have been both ascribed to Aristotle. The ascription of literalism to Aristotle, however, commits Aristotle to the unattractive view that mathematics studies but a small fragment of the physical world; and there is evidence that Aristotle would deny the literalist position that mathematical objects are perceivable. The ascription of (...) fictionalism also faces a difficult challenge: there is evidence that Aristotle would deny the fictionalist position that mathematics is false. I argue that, in Aristotle's view, the fiction of mathematics is not to treat what does not exist as if existing but to treat mathematical objects with an ontological status they lack. This form of fictionalism is consistent with holding that mathematics is true. (shrink)

I discuss the argument Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23-32. I discuss (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it as eristic and inconclusive and (i) the solution (lusis) Aristotle proposes against it.

In what ways and how far does virtue shield someone against suffering evils? In other words, how do non-moral evils affect the lives of virtuous people and to what extent can someone endure evils while staying happy? The central purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions by exploring what Aristotle has to say about the effects of evils in human well-being in general and his treatment of extreme misfortunes.

A generally ignored feature of Aristotle’s famous function argument is its reliance on the claim that practitioners of the crafts (technai) have functions: but this claim does important work. Aristotle is pointing to the fact that we judge everyday rational agency and agents by norms which are independent of their contingent desires: a good doctor is not just one who happens to achieve his personal goals through his work. But, Aristotle argues, such norms can only be binding (...) on individuals if human rational agency as such is governed by objective teleological norms.
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Prior Analytics by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE) and Laws of Thought by the English mathematician George Boole (1815 – 1864) are the two most important surviving original logical works from before the advent of modern logic. This article has a single goal: to compare Aristotle’s system with the system that Boole constructed over twenty-two centuries later intending to extend and perfect what Aristotle had started. This comparison merits an article itself. Accordingly, this article (...) does not discuss many other historically and philosophically important aspects of Boole’s book, e.g. his confused attempt to apply differential calculus to logic, his misguided effort to make his system of ‘class logic’ serve as a kind of ‘truth-functional logic’, his now almost forgotten foray into probability theory, or his blindness to the fact that a truth-functional combination of equations that follows from a given truth-functional combination of equations need not follow truth-functionally. One of the main conclusions is that Boole’s contribution widened logic and changed its nature to such an extent that he fully deserves to share with Aristotle the status of being a founding figure in logic. By setting forth in clear and systematic fashion the basic methods for establishing validity and for establishing invalidity, Aristotle became the founder of logic as formal epistemology. By making the first unmistakable steps toward opening logic to the study of ‘laws of thought’—tautologies and laws such as excluded middle and non-contradiction—Boole became the founder of logic as formal ontology. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further (...) understanding Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s analysis of unenacted capacities to show the role they play in his discovery of the concept of actuality. I first argue that Aristotle begins Metaphysics IX by focusing on active and passive capacities, after which I discuss Aristotle’s confrontation with the Megarians, the philosophers who maintain that a capacity is present only insofar as it is being enacted. Using Heidegger’s interpretation as a guide, I show that Aristotle’s rejection of the Megarian position (...) leads him to propose that presence cannot be confined to activity. I also argue that this provides the context for Aristotle to realize that the relation between capacity and activity can be generalized as the relation between two ways of being. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtue of character is a state of the non-rational part of the soul that makes one prone to making and acting on decisions in virtue of that part’s standing in the right relation to (correct) reason, namely, a relation that qualifies the agent as a true self-lover. In effect, this central feature of virtue of character is nothing else than love of practical wisdom. As I argue, it not only explains how reason can hold (...) direct authority over non-rational desires but also why Aristotle defines virtue of character as hexis prohairetikē. (shrink)

The paper discusses the active part in the process of perceiving, usually expressed by the Greek word krinein. It is argued that krinein in one of its uses means "to judge" in the sense of judging a case, i. e. deciding it. It is not used for making statements. A second meaning of the Greek word is that of discerning or discriminating, and it is this meaning that plays a central part in Aristotle's theory of perception.

This paper sets out to evaluate the claim that Aristotle’s Assertoric Syllogistic is a relevance logic or shows significant similarities with it. I prepare the grounds for a meaningful comparison by extracting the notion of relevance employed in the most influential work on modern relevance logic, Anderson and Belnap’s Entailment. This notion is characterized by two conditions imposed on the concept of validity: first, that some meaning content is shared between the premises and the conclusion, and second, that the (...) premises of a proof are actually used to derive the conclusion. Turning to Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, I argue that there is evidence that Aristotle’s Assertoric Syllogistic satisfies both conditions. Moreover, Aristotle at one point explicitly addresses the potential harmfulness of syllogisms with unused premises. Here, I argue that Aristotle’s analysis allows for a rejection of such syllogisms on formal grounds established in the foregoing parts of the Prior Analytics. In a final section I consider the view that Aristotle distinguished between validity on the one hand and syllogistic validity on the other. Following this line of reasoning, Aristotle’s logic might not be a relevance logic, since relevance is part of syllogistic validity and not, as modern relevance logic demands, of general validity. I argue that the reasons to reject this view are more compelling than the reasons to accept it and that we can, cautiously, uphold the result that Aristotle’s logic is a relevance logic. (shrink)

A predicate logic typically has a heterogeneous semantic theory. Subjects and predicates have distinct semantic roles: subjects refer; predicates characterize. A sentence expresses a truth if the object to which the subject refers is correctly characterized by the predicate. Traditional term logic, by contrast, has a homogeneous theory: both subjects and predicates refer; and a sentence is true if the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In this paper, I will examine evidence for ascribing to Aristotle (...) the view that subjects and predicates refer. If this is correct, then it seems that Aristotle, like the traditional term logician, problematically conflates predication and identity claims. I will argue that we can ascribe to Aristotle the view that both subjects and predicates refer, while holding that he would deny that a sentence is true just in case the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In particular, I will argue that Aristotle's core semantic notion is not identity but the weaker relation of constitution. For example, the predication ‘All men are mortal’ expresses a true thought, in Aristotle's view, just in case the mereological sum of humans is a part of the mereological sum of mortals. (shrink)

This paper is on Aristotle's conception of the continuum. It is argued that although Aristotle did not have the modern conception of real numbers, his account of the continuum does mirror the topology of the real number continuum in modern mathematics especially as seen in the work of Georg Cantor. Some differences are noted, particularly as regards Aristotle's conception of number and the modern conception of real numbers. The issue of whether Aristotle had the notion of (...) open versus closed intervals is discussed. Finally, it is suggested that one reason there is a common structure between Aristotle's account of the continuum and that found in Cantor's definition of the real number continuum is that our intuitions about the continuum have their source in the experience of the real spatiotemporal world. A plea is made to consider Aristotle's abstractionist philosophy of mathematics anew. (shrink)

The paper defends three claims about Aristotle’s theory of uncontrolled actions (akrasia) in NE 7.3. First, I argue that the first part of NE 7.3 contains the description of the overall state of mind of the agent while she acts without control. Aristotle’s solution to the problem of uncontrolled action lies in the analogy between the uncontrolled agent and people who are drunk, mad, or asleep. This analogy is interpreted as meaning that the uncontrolled agent, while acting without (...) control, is still in possession of her knowledge but she is unable to use it as knowledge due to the temporary disablement of her reason by appetite. Due to this disablement, the uncontrolled agent is temporarily unable to be motivated to act by her knowledge and acts merely on her appetite. Second, I argue that the second part of NE 7.3 provides an analysis of the particular mental state from which the uncontrolled action issues. Its central passage is a description of the uncontrolled agent’s state of mind before the uncontrolled action and not, as it has been traditionally understood, a description of her state of mind during the uncontrolled action. Third, I argue that, on Aristotle’s view, the transition from the state before the uncontrolled action to the state in which the agent already acts without control does not involve any psychological state that would constitute the agent’s choice to abandon her decision and give in to her desires but proceeds on a purely physiological level. (shrink)

Many philosophers working on virtue theory have resisted the idea that the virtues are practical skills, apparently following Aristotle’s resistance to that idea. Bucking the trend, Matt Stichter defends a strong version of this idea in The Skillfulness of Virtue by marshaling a wide range of conceptual and empirical arguments to argue that the moral virtues are robust skills involving the cognitive-conative unification of Aristotelian phronêsis (‘practical intelligence’). Here I argue that Aristotle overlooks a more delimited kind of (...) practical intelligence, strongly analogous to his own account of phronêsis, that unifies complex forms of expertise such as medicine or even high-level sports. Insofar as the skill model of virtue is compelling, it must draw on a robust conception of practical expertise (technê) like the one developed here rather than the ordinary, anemic conception of practical skills. (shrink)

This paper presents Aristotle’s method of understanding the first principles of natural things in the Physics I.1 and analyzes the three stages of which this method consists. In the Physics I.1, Aristotle suggests that the natural proper route which one has to follow in order to find out the first principles of natural things is to proceed from what is clearer and more knowable to us to what is more knowable and clear by nature. In the Physics I.1, (...) the terms καθόλου and καθ΄ ἕκαστα are not used in their usual meaning. This paper examines the Physics I.1 in comparison with the Posterior Analytics II. 19 in order to elucidate the meaning of καθόλου in the first chapter of Aristotle’s Physics. Furthermore, it reaches the conclusion that the structure of the natural world to which we belong determines the structure and the form of our knowledge. On the one hand, natural things are composite and, on the other hand, perception is involved in the initial grasping of natural things as composites. Thus, since perceptual knowledge is more accessible to us than any other kind of knowledge it is natural to reach knowledge of simple things, i.e., of the principles, starting our inquiry with the composites. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the (...) essences, I defend a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 229 - 256 I argue that, for Aristotle, akratic actions are against one’s general commitment to act in accordance with one’s correct conception of one’s ends overall. Only some akratic actions are also against one’s correct decision to perform a particular action. This thesis explains Aristotle’s views on impetuous _akrasia_, weak _akrasia_, stubborn opinionated action and inverse _akrasia_. In addition, it sheds light on Aristotle’s account of practical rationality. Rational actions (...) are coherent primarily with one’s commitments to one’s conception of the good and only secondarily with one’s decisions to perform a particular action. (shrink)

The sense of smell occupies a peculiar intermediate position within Aristotle's theory of sense perception: odours, like colours and sounds, are perceived at a distance through an external medium of air or water; yet in their nature they are intimately related to flavours, the proper objects of taste, which for Aristotle is a form of touch. In this paper, I examine Aristotle's claims about odour and smell, especially in De Anima II.9 and De Sensu 5, to see (...) what light they shed on his theory of sense perception more generally. In the first half, I argue that neither of the two most influential recent ways of understanding Aristotle's theory of perception can adequately account for what he says about the sense of smell. In the second half, I offer my own positive account, considering and resolving various puzzles raised by Aristotle's claims about the nature of odour and its relation to flavour. Finally, I conclude that Aristotle's discussions of odour and smell suggest a plausible and interesting way of understanding the relationship, on his view, between ordinary, material changes in the sense organs and the activation of the capacity to perceive, considered merely as such. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Aristotle’s views on natural kinds and the compatibility of pluralism and realism, a topic that has generated considerable interest among contemporary philosophers. I argue that, when it came to zoology, Aristotle denied that there is only one way of organizing the diversity of the living world into natural kinds that will yield a single, unified system of classification. Instead, living things can be grouped and regrouped into various cross-cutting kinds on the basis of (...) objective similarities and differences in ways that subserve the explanatory context. Since the explanatory aims of zoology are diverse and variegated, the kinds it recognizes must be equally diverse and variegated. At the same time, there are certain constraints on which kinds can be selected. And those constraints derive more from the causal structure of the world than from the proclivities of the classifier (hence the realism). This distinguishes Aristotle’s version of pluralistic realism from those contemporary versions (like Dupré’s “promiscuous realism”) that treat all or most classifications of a given domain as equally legitimate and not just a sub-set of kinds recognized by the science that studies it. By contrast, Aristotle privileges scientifically important kinds on the basis of their role in causal investigations. On this picture natural kinds are those kinds with the sort of causal structure that allows them to enter into scientific explanations. In the final section I argue that Aristotle’s zoology should remain of interest to philosophers and biologists alike insofar as it combines a pluralistic form of realism with a rank-free approach to classification. (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)

In this paper I consider two related issues raised by Aristotle 's treatment of hearing and sounds. The first concerns the kinds of changes Aristotle takes to occur, in both perceptual medium and sense organs, when a perceiver hears a sounding object. The second issue concerns Aristotle 's views on the nature and location of the proper objects of auditory perception. I argue that Aristotle 's views on these topics are not what they have sometimes been (...) taken to be, and that when rightly understood they compare favourably in many respects with leading contemporary accounts. (shrink)

In De Anima II.6, Aristotle divides the objects of perception into three kinds: “special perceptibles" (idia aisthêta) such as colours, sounds and flavours, which can be perceived in their own right by only one sense; “common perceptibles" (koina aisthêta) such as shapes, sizes and movements, which can be perceived in their own right by multiple senses; and “incidental perceptibles,” such as the son of Diares, which can be perceived only “incidentally” (kata sumbebêkos). In this paper, I examine this division (...) of perceptibles and consider what it amounts to. First, I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between perceiving something in its own right (kath' hauto) and perceiving it incidentally marks a causal distinction: what is perceived in its own right causes perception as such, whereas what is perceived incidentally coincides with what is perceived in its own right. Second, I argue that for Aristotle special perceptibles, unlike common perceptibles, belong to homogeneous bodies on account of their chemical composition. Finally, I explain the primacy Aristotle assigns to special perceptibles and his claim that perception of them alone is free from error. I conclude with some brief remarks on Aristotle and the primary/secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

Exceptions are often cited as a counterargument against formal causation. Against this I argue that Aristotle explicitly allows for exceptions to essences in his biological writings, and that he has a means of explaining them through formal causation – though this means that he has to slightly elaborate on his general case theory from the Posterior Analytics, by supplementing it with a special case application in the biological writings. Specifically for Aristotle an essential predication need not be a (...) universal predication. Rather an essential predication is where a property belongs essentially to a species or genus. This essential predication serves a causal and explanatory role, and is not dependent on a corresponding universal predication. (shrink)

This paper discusses the following question: why was the term “dunatos” (“possible”) employed by Aristotle as an alternative label for imperfect syllogisms in his discussion of assertoric syllogistic? My answer ascribes to Aristotle a bottom up perspective, in which he stresses what is necessary in the premise-pairs to attain target conclusions of a given form within a given figure. I argue that “dunatos” is employed by Aristotle to stress that an imperfect syllogism is always one of the (...) possible options to attain a conclusion of a given form within a given figure. I also argue that this picture sheds some light on Aristotle’s clarifications of the final clause in his definition of syllogism. (shrink)

I discuss what Aristotle means when he say that scientific demonstration must proceed from necessary principles. I argue that, for Aristotle, scientific demonstration should not be reduced to sound deduction with necessary premises. Scientific demonstration ultimately depends on the fully appropriate explanatory factor for a given explanandum. This explanatory factor is what makes the explanandum what it is. Consequently, this factor is also unique. When Aristotle says that demonstration must proceed from necessary principles, he means that each (...) demonstration requires the principle that is the necessary one for the fully appropriate explanation of its explanandum. This picture also provides a key to understand Aristotle's thesis that scientific explanation depends on essences: it is the essence of the attribute to be explained that should be stated as the fully appropriate explanatory factor. (shrink)

Aristotle’s discussions of natural slavery, ‘barbarian kingship’, and the natural characteristics of barbarians or non-Greeks are usually read as calling into question the intellectual, ethical, and political accomplishments of non-Greeks. Such accounts of non-Greek inferiority or inability to self-govern also appear to presuppose a climatic or environmental account that on the whole would imply severe limitations on the possibility of political flourishing for peoples living outside the Greek Mediterranean basin. In light of such accounts, it is somewhat astounding to (...) find Aristotle praising the social and political institutions of Carthage within his discussion of the best constitution in the second book of the Politics. In the 4th century BCE, Carthage (modern day Tunis) was a Phoenician commercial empire that culturally and linguistically was Semitic and clearly non-Greek. That Aristotle contrasts Carthage, a non-Greek polis, favorably with both Sparta and Crete undermines both the claim that Aristotle embraced a categorical opposition between Greeks and non-Greeks and the claim that he was dismissive of the achievements of non-Greeks. (shrink)

In Physics 4.11, Aristotle discusses a sophistical puzzle in which "being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-market-place." I take this puzzle to threaten the persistence of changing entities. Aristotle's answer to the puzzle is that the changing thing "is the same in respect of that, by (means of) being which at any time it is (what it is), S but in definition it is different." That is, Coriscus may be described as either a persisting substrate or as one (...) or more accidental unities. Described as the former, Coriscus persists, but described as the latter, he does not. (shrink)

With regard to the importance and position of phone for thought and language in Aristotle, and his brief account of it in Περὶ Ψυχῆς / De Anima, here I am going to paraphrase his brief mentioning in the chapter eight of the second book of the mentioned treatise. When we read the pertinent section of 4201b - 421a, we see that Aristotle examines it in connection with “hearing” as a sense that is embedded in his wide discussion about (...) “soul”. But when we go into details under this general topic, we see that phone definition is connected with three concepts such as sound, phantasia and semantic. In other words, Aristotle considers human phone in a unit that consists of “hearing, sound, phantasia and semantic” and all of these within a broader specific discussion about human “soul” denotes to the texture and nature of his account. (shrink)

Aristotle, though not the first Greek virtue ethicist, was the first to establish virtue ethics as a distinct philosophical discipline. His exposition of the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics set the terms of subsequent debate in the European and Arabic traditions by proposing a set of plausible assumptions from which virtue ethics should proceed. His conception of human well-being and virtue as well as his brand of ethical naturalism were influential from antiquity through the Middle Ages and continue to (...) be influential today. (shrink)