Showing papers in "Phronesis in 2009"

Delimiting Aristotle's Conception of Stasis in the Politics

Abstract: Some scholars have claimed that Aristotle uses the word " stasis " to refer to any sort of conflict in the political realm, covering everything from civil-war to social rivalry. After developing an interpretation of Politics V.1-4, where Aristotle discusses the topic at length, I argue that he is in fact carefully delimiting the concept of stasis so that it applies only to civil-war and open sedition, showing how his analysis excludes partisan antipathy, legal disputes, and political competition. I conclude with some reflections on the significance of this position: by defining stasis narrowly, Aristotle not only offers a profound critique of Plato's theory of regime change, but adopts a position that allows his political philosophy to be relevant for modern theories requiring acceptance rather than rejection of conflict in the political realm.

Mistakes of Reason: Practical Reasoning and the Fallacy of Accident

Abstract: For Aristotle the fallacy of accident arises from mistakes about being per accidens and not from accidental predication. Mistakes in perceiving per accidens come from our judgements about being per accidens and so commit that fallacy. Practical syllogisms have the same formal structure as being and perceiving per accidens. Moreover perceiving per accidens typically provides the minor premise for the practical syllogism as it makes it possible for us to know singular propositions, especially those about substances. Thus these minor premises may come about through fallacious reasoning, what today would be called reasoning via collateral information. On account of these foundations for the practical syllogism, even a person of practical wisdom will need a lot of luck to avoid mistakes.

Knowing by likeness in empedocles

Abstract: Contrary to the Aristotelian interpretation of Empedocles' views about cognition, according to which all cognition, like perception, is due to the compositional likeness between subject and object of cognition, this paper argues that when Empedocles says that we know one thing 'by' another (e.g. earth by earth or love by love), he is characterizing analogical reasoning, an intellectual activity quite different from perception (which is explained by the fit between effluences and pores). The paper also explores the idea that strife and love describe, in addition to physical separation and composition, the mental activities of analyzing and composing.

Truth as a Value in Plato's Republic

Abstract: To what extent is possession of truth considered a good thing in the Republic? Certain passages of the dialogue appear to regard truth as a universal good, but others are more circumspect about its value, recommending that truth be withheld on occasion and falsehood disseminated. I seek to resolve this tension by distinguishing two kinds of truths, which I label 'philosophical' and 'non-philosophical'. Philosophical truths, I argue, are considered unqualifiedly good to possess, whereas non-philosophical truths are regarded as worth possessing only to the extent that possession conduces to good behaviour in those who possess them. In the non-philosophical arena it is an open question, to be determined on a case-by-case basis, whether falsehood is more efficacious in furthering this practical aim than truth.

Sons of the Earth: Are the Stoics Metaphysical Brutes?

Abstract: In this paper, it is argued the Stoics develop an account of corporeals that allows their theory of bodies to be, at the same time, a theory of causation, agency, and reason. The paper aims to shed new light on the Stoics' engagement with Plato's Sophist. It is argued that the Stoics are Sons of the Earth insofar as, for them, the study of corporeals – rather than the study of being – is the most fundamental study of reality. However, they are sophisticated Sons of the Earth by developing a complex notion of corporeals. A crucial component of this account is that ordinary bodies are individuated by the way in which the corporeal god pervades them. The corporeal god is the one cause of all movements and actions in the universe.

Aristotle on the Subject Matter of Geometry

Abstract: I offer a new interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy of geometry, which he presents in greatest detail in Metaphysics M 3. On my interpretation, Aristotle holds that the points, lines, planes, and solids of geometry belong to the sensible realm, but not in a straightforward way. Rather, by considering Aristotle's second attempt to solve Zeno's Runner Paradox in Book VIII of the Physics, I explain how such objects exist in the sensibles in a special way. I conclude by considering the passages that lead Jonathan Lear to his fictionalist reading of Met. M3,1 and I argue that Aristotle is here describing useful heuristics for the teaching of geometry; he is not pronouncing on the meaning of mathematical talk.

Diotima's Eudaemonism: Intrinsic Value and Rational Motivation in Plato's Symposium

Abstract: This paper gives a new interpretation of the central section of Plato's Symposium (199d-212a). According to this interpretation, the term "καλoν", as used by Plato here, stands for what many contemporary philosophers call "intrinsic value"; and "love" (eρωζ) is in effect rational motivation , which for Plato consists in the desire to "possess" intrinsically valuable things – that is, according to Plato, to be happy – for as long as possible. An explanation is given of why Plato believes that "possessing" intrinsically valuable things, at least for mortals like us, consists in actively creating instantiations of the intrinsic values, both in oneself and in the external world, and in knowing and loving these intrinsic values and their instantiations. Finally, it is argued that this interpretation reveals that Plato's "eudaemonism" is a different and more defensible doctrine than many commentators believe.

The Stoic Ontology of Geometrical Limits

Abstract: Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy.

Le contre Les géomètres de sextus empiricus: Sources, cible, structure

Abstract: In this paper, we examine Sextus Empiricus' treatise Against the geometers. We first set this treatise in the overall context of the sceptic's polemics against the liberal arts. After a discussion of Sextus' attitude to the quadrivium, we discuss the structure, the sources and the target of the Against the geometers. It appears that Euclid is not Sextus' source, and neither he, nor the professional geometers, seem to be Sextus' main targets. Of course, Sextus never really makes clear his precise target, but his attacks are rather directed against geometry as a means of modelling the physical world, thus ruining the support geometry was intended to bring to the physical part of dogmatic philosophy.

Parmenides' Modal Fallacy

Abstract: In his great poem, Parmenides uses an argument by elimination to select the correct "way of inquiry" from a pool of two, the ways of is and of is not, joined later by a third, "mixed" way of is and is not. Parmenides' first two ways are soon given modal upgrades – is becomes cannot not be, and is not becomes necessarily is not (B2, 3-6) – and these are no longer contradictories of one another. And is the common view right, that Parmenides rejects the "mixed" way because it is a contradiction? I argue that the modal upgrades are the product of an illicit modal shift. This same shift, built into two Exclusion Arguments, gives Parmenides a novel argument to show that the "mixed" way fails. Given the independent failure of the way of is not, Parmenides' argument by elimination is complete.

A Synchronic Justification for Aristotle's Commitment to Prime Matter

Abstract: The current debate over Aristotle's commitment to prime matter is centered on diachronic considerations found in his theory of substantial change. I argue that an appeal to this theory is not required in order to establish his commitment to the existence of prime matter. By drawing on Physics II.1's conception of what it is for an element to have a nature – that is, to have an inner source of movement and rest – I introduce a synchronic justification for the existence of prime matter. By trading on the relationship between the thing that has a source of change and the source it has , I show that something that has a source in itself cannot be identical with its source, and that a type of matter that has no nature of its own (a kind of prime matter) is required to block this identification at the level of the elements.

Gaia Gets to Know Herself: Proclus on the World's Self-Perception

Abstract: Proclus' interpretation of the Timaeus confronts the question of whether the living being that is the Platonic cosmos perceives itself. Since sense perception is a mixed blessing in the Platonic tradition, Proclus solves this problem by differentiating different gradations of perception. The cosmos has only the highest kind. This paper contrasts Proclus' account of the world's perception of itself with James Lovelock's notion that the planet Earth, or Gaia, is aware of things going on within itself. This contrast illuminates several key differences between contemporary theories of perception and the neoplatonic world view. In particular, it argues that the neoplatonists had a radically different view of these matters because they assigned the property of truth not only to representations, but to objects as well.

Von einem Subjekt ausgesagt werden und an einem Subjekt vorliegen: zur Semantik genereller Terme in der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift

Abstract: According to the Greek Commentators in late antiquity, Aristotle's Categories is primarily concerned with simple expressions in so far as they signify things. But what is it for a simple expression to signify a thing? As for (non-empty) singular terms, it is safe to say that they denote things. But what about general terms? How do they signify things? The question is crucial to the theory of the Categories, since, as is argued in the first section of this paper, there is some truth in the Commentators' thesis that (part of) the Categories aims to elucidate the signification of simple expressions, including general terms. Of course, various prima facie plausible accounts of how general terms signify things are available; the second section discusses the basic assumptions which underlie them. A detailed analysis of Cat. 2a19-34 in the third section shows that the Categories' account is two-fold: On the one hand some general terms denote things (among the latter, the most prominent are τα κα' υπoκeιμeνoυ λeγoμeνα). What is denoted by a given general term does not stand in any relation to the objects falling under the term but is something that they are. Some general terms, on the other hand, connote things. What is connoted by a general term is a property which the objects falling under the term are related to by virtue of having it (τα eν υπoκeιμeνω oντα are such properties).